
Bouk uSJ- 



PRESICNTEl) HY 




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President 
The Burns Club of St. Louis 



\>aA^UVr% „_ „--■,.> ^.,, „,_, ^^X, 



ST. LOUIS NIGHTS WI' BURNS 



BURNS AND RELIGION 

REV. DR. W. C. BITTING 



BURNS, THE WORLD POET 
WILLIAM MARION REEDY 



BURNS AND ENGLISH POETRY 
PROFESSOR J. L. LOWES 

BURNS AND THE PROPHET ISAIAH 

JUDGE M. N. SALE 

BURNS AND THE AULD CLAY BIGGIN 
FREDERICK W. LEHMANN 




THE CLUB, THE ROOM, THE BURNSIANA, 
THE NIGHTS 

WALTER B. STEVENS 



Printed for Private Distribution 

to Lovers of Burns 

by 

The Burns Club of St. Louis 

1913 






THE MEM'RY O' BURNS 



ST. LOUIS NIGHTS WV BURNS 

To the Immortal Memory, the Burns Club of St. 
Louis dedicates its fourth tribute in printer's ink. "Poems 
and Letters in Facsimile" zvas the club's initial contribu- 
tion to Burns literature. This luas followed by "Burns 
Nights in St. Louis."- More recently zvas reproduced in 
facsimile the "Lhves to Burns" by Chang Yoiv Tong, a 
member of the Imperial Chinese Commission at the 
World's Fair. . The cordial reception given to these 
privately issued publications by lovers of Burns in many 
parts of the world encouraged the club to present "St. 
Louis Nights wi' Burns." 

This club exists, in the zvords of the by-lazvs, "for the 
purpose of commemorating the life and genius of Robert 
Burns." The purpose had its original expression in the 
Burns Cottage at the World's Fair of IQC4. Reproduc- 
tions of palaces, copies of historic mansions, imposing 
types of architecture of many lands zvere grouped in "The 
Place of Nations," as it zvas called. In the midst of them 
was the replica of the clay-zvalled, straw-thatched birth- 
place of him zvho "brought from Heaven to man the 
message of the dignity of humanity." It was built and 
maintained by the Burns Cottage Association, composed 
of men zvho had found inspiration in the creed of Burns. 
The Burns Club of St. Louis succeeded the Cottage Asso- 
ciation. It has a permanent home in the upper chamber 
of the quaint house of the Artists' Guild. Here, about the 
great fireplace, the club has assembled treasured relics of 
Burns' life. Upon the zvalls are portraits of Burns, 
sketches of scenes made familiar by his writings and 
facsimilies of many poems in his handzvriting. The 
chamber is open^to the rafters. It has little zvindows high 
lip under the eaves. The zvhole interior architecture 
accords with the collection of Burnsiana and zvith the uses 
to zvhich the chamber is put by the club. 

Anniversaries of Burns are observed by the Burns 
Club of St. Louis in zvays original. Not forgotten are the 



oatmeal cake, the haggis, the Scotch shortbread. There 

are "barley bree an' sic like at ca." 

"But nane need drink that are na dry." 

By way of introduction to the dinner the president 

repeats the Selkirk Grace: 

Some hae meat, and carina eat, 
And\ some wad eat that zuant it; 
But zi<e hae meat and we can eat. 
And sac the Lord be thanket. 

In nimibcrs the club is not unwieldy. The members 
mi comfortably the table running the length of the cham- 
ber, zvith room for a congenial guest or two. There is 
enough Scotch blood in the gathering to save the flavor of 
Scotch speech. But the membership ranges widely in 
nativity, in creed and in vocation. The spirit of Burns 
pervades and abides. Lines ivith zvhich this spirit is 
invoked are found by the president of the club in such 
quotations from Burns as the bard's own farewell to the 
brethren of St. James lodge at Tarbolton: 

A last request permit me here 
When yearly ye assemble a,' 
One round, I ask it with a tear. 
To him, the Bard, that's far awa'. 

As the night progresses, there are stories of Burns; 
there arc spirited discussions on opinions about Burns; 
there are quotations and interpretations; there is singing 
of songs of "rantin' rovin' Robin." 

The more formal event of the evening is a thought- 
ful address on Burns, sometimes given by a member of 
the club, sometimes delivered by a guest. A member of 
the club returning to his chair from the most recent of 
these St. Louis Nights zvi' Burns gave this editorial 
expression to his feeling: 

One of the proofs of the greatness of Robert Burns as a 
poet is the fact that his birthday celebrations are unsurp'a^sed as 
feasts of reason and How of soul. The subject is inexhaustibly 
rich and enjoyable. 

The editor had sat for an hour under the spell of 
ReiK Dr. Bitting's vivid tracing of relationship between 
Robert Burns and religious matters. IV. B. S. 



BURNS AND RELIGIOUS MATTERS 

By Rev. Dr. W. C. Bitting, 
Pastor, Second Baptist Church, St. Louis 

January 25, 1913 

ONLY the most surprising results of original 
research could yield anything new about Robert 
Burns. Every Scotchman has exhausted himself, and 
almost everybody else, in the effort to find a fresh ray 
for the aureole of the Ayrshire poet. Even invention 
has not been ignored. He has already passed the first 
stage in his canonization, since some of his Caledonian 
adorers do not deem sober facts ample enough to 
account for the real and imaginary glories of Burns. 
They have also allured other nationalities into their 
growing cult. The puzzles of the personality of their 
fellow countryman have entrapped the interest of many 
nations. Burns is high up on the Scotch totem pole. 

It is most natural that any reader of the poet 
should use his own spectacles. I have therefore chosen 
"Robert Burns and Religious Matters" as my topic for 
this evening. We must not put upon him our modern 
twentieth century ideals, because they are develop- 
ments since his day. He must be judged only by the 
standards of his own times. Scarcely anything could 
be more fertile in error and misconception than to 
thrust back upon any past age attainments and ideals 
of which it knew nothing. It should not be condemned 
for failure to stand the test of a higher life developed 
later than itself. And yet this is the foolish way in 
which the ignorant always study the Bible, or religion, 
and all things else. To judge of Burns' attitude to 
religious matters we must know the conditions in his 
times. He was a true son of his age. 

Burns was an incarnation of contradictions. They 
appear in his poems, life and letters. He was equally 



at home with the philosophers in Edinburgh or the 
roistering bacchanaHans in Poosie Nansie's dram shop. 
Salon and saloon alike allured him. He was dainty and 
dirty in the same poem, saintly and satanic in the same 
amour. He satirized and sanctified the church in the 
same criticism. Angel and demon are equally in evi- 
dence in his own heart. He could write glorious lines 
for his father's epitaph, and erotic boasts of his own 
shame at the same time. As Carlyle says, "'Wild desires 
and wild Repentance alternately oppress him." We 
would amend by substituting simultaneously for 
"alternately." "His mind was at variance with itself," 
is an accurate judgment by the same biographer. He 
was a lover at once devilish and divine. All this shows 
itself in what he wrote because it was his life. In 1786, 
at the age of twenty-seven years, he wrote to Robert 
Aiken, "Even in the hour of social mirth, my gaiety 
is the madness of an intoxicated criminal under the 
hands of the executioner." And in this he was not 
alone. St. Paul himself had the same strife 
(Ro. 7:19-23). All of us know the same experience. 
It is inevitable. It is the evidence of our slow human 
evolution from beasts into men. It is absent from no 
heart and life. Only, these two elements vary in dififer- 
ent persons. In Burns both shone brilliantly. Now 
we are sure that the holy life will triumph, and now we 
are certain that he has resigned himself to carnality, 
and finally the old puzzle remains unsolved, and insol- 
uble except as an illustration of the upward pull of 
man, and the downward pull of the beast, in their 
eternal tug of war over our souls. 

But this mixture glows in its perplexity in Burns 
only to those who fail to realize a very splendid trait of 
character revealed in all that he was and did. He was 
sincere. This showed itself in two ways. He had a 
mind like the sensitive plate of a camera. It photo- 
graphed things. He painted what he saw, whether the 
uprooted daisy, the limping hare, the field mouse, the 

6 



peasant worker, the lass, the kirk, the preacher, the 
drunken beggar, the besotted tramp, or the pious home. 
So accurate is he in this social and literary photo- 
graphy that we can construct almost the whole of his 
environment from his literature. He will not, like the 
modern journalist, distort and lie about men and events. 
Moreover, he sang what he felt. He is autobiographic. 
As few writers he turns himself inside out and lets us 
see the crevices and corners of his soul. He is what 
he is, and lets us see what he is. It may not be always 
good, and is not always bad, but he has no use for the 
sign "No Admittance" over his soul. He makes tres- 
passing impossible because he throws open the whole 
of himself to all the world. There is no reserve spot, 
no private ground with a barbed wire fence about it. 
We can tramp over every nook of his soul. Our feet 
are now soiled with his filth, now dance with his glee, 
and now we sit down and pull off our shoes for we 
step from hell upon holy ground almost in an instant. 
Mountains and meadows, sun spots and shades, alti- 
tudes and caverns of his being are all open to the 
public, and over everything is the word, "Welcome." 
This quality of sincerity revealed both in photo- 
graphing what is external, and in uncovering himself, 
is essentially religious. Burns was no hypocrite, and 
was unsparing in his detestation of hypocrisy. These 
words in an epistle to John Rankine show his scorn for 
sham saints. He writes in delicious irony : 

"Hypocrisy, in mercy spare it! 
That holy robe, oh, dinna tear it! 
Spare't for their sakes wha often wear it, 

The lads in black! 
But your curst wit, when it comes near it, 

Rives't afif their back. 

Think, wicked sinner, wha ye're skaithing 
It's just the blue-gown badge and claithing 
O' saunts; tak that, ye lea'e them naething 

To ken them by, 
Frae ony unregenerate heathen 

Like you or I." 



He had no use for make-believe either in literature 
or in living. He ripped off veneering whenever he saw 
it. He wore no mask and detested masqueraders in 
life or letters. He loved nakedness. Would that he 
could now tear off the disguises of our modern busi- 
ness, literature, religion, and social life. He is needed 
to expose the degrading adoration of the dollar that 
twists into hideous deformity our newspapers,, indus- 
tries, parlors, politics, and sometimes our churches. 
This prophetic spirit he had, as we shall see. It is 
this very sincerity that yields us the astonishing and 
puzzling mixture of light and night in poem and per- 
son. But it explains the puzzle, since it tells us that he 
was only human. It clarifies the problem because in 
him humanity was unusual. Most men are only 
embryonic. Only the minority pass the period of 
gestation. He is not grayish neutrality. He was no 
uninteresting nondescript. A brilliant devil is more 
fascinating than a dull saint. Likewise a sincere saint, 
even if only really a caricature, is more interesting than 
a conventional imp. 

Let us now look at some of the directions in which 
this camera poet turned his lens, and also gaze into 
the soul by means of his own confessions. We are not 
his judges, but only reporters. We are not here to 
appraise his qualities so much as to describe them. 

1. He made use of and reverenced the Bible. Of 
course it was the Bible as conceived in his day, not 
the Book that our modern sane and reverent scholar- 
ship gives us. His poems have many quotations from 
the Scriptures. His letters give ample evidence of his 
familiarity with them. His "songs" are almost lacking 
in allusions to them. Like the majority of modern men 
and church members, he read the Bible with a kind of 
superstitious reverence, glorified it as the "Word of 
God," according to the cant of orthodoxy, used it as a 
source of quotations, but failed to incarnate its teach- 
ings. In this respect he was neither worse nor better 
than his orthodox contemporaries. If his vices of the 
flesh violated some of the ideals of the Bible, theirs 



smashed other spiritual and intellectual ideals of the 
Scriptures. His uses of passages from the Book are 
all conventional. He exchanged Bibles with Jean 
Armour one Sunday under the most solemn circum- 
stances. His own, in two volumes, was inscribed in 
his own hand. In volume I was written, "And ye shall 
not swear by my name falsely, I am the Lord, Levit. 
19th chapter, 12th verse." In volume II, "Thou shalt 
not forswear thyself, but shalt perform unto the Lord 
thine oath. Matth. 5th chapter 33d verse." In the 
whirl of passion that followed this sentimentally holy 
pledge he forgot both passages. It is interesting to 
note that Mary Campbell's name was in one of these 
volumes given to Jean as pledge, but both Mary's and 
Robert's names were almost obliterated when the two 
volumes were found. Did Jean Armour try to erase 
Mary Campbell's in jealousy, and Burns' in anger? 

Like all of us Burns quoted Scripture to reinforce his 
own plans, views, and moral conditions. What would 
we do without such a consolatory convenience? His 
quotations are from all parts of both Testaments, and 
often there are allusions without quotations. It is true 
that no one can thoroughly understand Burns' poems 
or letters without some knowledge of the Bible. The 
same is true of Shakespeare and Ruskin. The know- 
ledge of the Scriptures is necessary if one would read 
English literature intelligently. No one who is ignor- 
ant of the Bible can call himself cultured. And no 
unintelligent familiarity with the mere language of 
the Bible qualifies one to speak sanely of its character 
or teachings. One may know its words by heart from 
cover to cover, and yet be densely ignorant of its nature 
and significance. 

Burns has left us splendid versifications of the 
first Psalm, and part of the 90th. How we wish he had 
revised many of the uncouth and ragged metrical ver- 
sions of his time. Many of his ancestors and contem- 
poraries, judged by their products, appear to have 
thought that piety and good poetry are inconsistent. 
This mistake is also common today. 



In the Cotter's Saturday Night he has described 
family worship at the close of the week. Doubtless he 
has there photographed for us his father's priesthood 
in the home. There is no satire therein. Burns' shafts 
were only for hypocrisy. No doubt his knowledge of 
the Bible came from his own reading of the Book, as 
well as from family prayers, and the church services. 
In all his published works there is no sneer at the Bible, 
no word to detract from its influence over life. On the 
contrary he is always reverent, even in the face of 
many things that would naturally provoke such a 
sincere soul to satire. He had enough brains, as some 
even in our day do not, to distinguish between the 
Holy Book itself, and the misuse of it by ardent but 
mistaken friends. His "Epistle to John Goudie, 
Kilmarnock," called out by Goudie's essay on the 
authority of the Scriptures, evidently an assault upon 
the orthodox view of the time, shows Burns' deep 
sympathy with any movement that would end devotion 
to the "letter that killeth." 

"Poor gapin', glowrin,^ Superstition, 
Waes me ! she's in a sad condition; 
Fie ! bring Black Jock,^ her state physician, 

To see her water: 
Alas ! there's ground o' great suspicion 

She'll ne'er get better. 

Auld Orthodoxy long did grapple 
But now she's got an unco ripple;^ 
Haste, gie her name up i' the chapel. 

Nigh unto death; 
See how she fetches at the thrapple,^ 

And gasps for breath! 

Enthusiasm's past redemption, 

Gaen' in a galloping consumption, 

Not a' the quacks, wi' a' their gumption, 

Will ever mend her. 
Her feeble pulse gies strong presumption 

Death soon will end her." 



^Staring. 

-Rev. Jno. Russell, Kilmarnock, one of the heroes of 

the "Twa Herds." 
^Pain in back and loins. 
^Throat. 

10 



II. Burns' Theology. He believed in God. He 
did not believe in such a capricious deity as was 
preached by the ultra-Calvinism prevalent in his day. 
It was not God himself, but a caricature of him that 
Burns satirized. Without the training that qualified 
him to debate with the theological logicians of his day, 
and without the ecclesiastical standing that could give 
him the opportunity to do so, even if he had been 
technically prepared, he had left no weapon but ridi- 
cule. We can enjoy what must have been most dis- 
tressing and irreverent to the theologians and their 
unthinking followers of his time. Listen to this from 
Holy Willie's Prayer. 

"O Thou, wha in the heavens dost dwell, 
Wha, as it pleases best thysel, 
Sends ane to heaven, and ten to hell, 

A' for thy glory, 
And no for ony guid or ill 

They've done afore thee! 

When frae my niither's womb I fell. 
Thou might hae plunged me into hell. 
To gnash my gums, to weep and wail, 

In burnin' lake, 
Whare damned devils roar and yell, 

Chain'd to a stake." 



What stronger picture could we have of the arbi- 
trary God created by the necessities of Augustinian and 
Calvinistic theology? 

Turn from this to Burns' own view of God. Read 
this prayer written in a time of contrition. 

"O Thou great Being ! what Thou art 
Surpasses me to know: 
Yet sure I am, that known to Thee 
Are all Thy works below. 

Thy creature here before Thee stands, 

All wretched and distrest; 
Yet sure those ills that wring my soul 

Obey thy high behest. 

11 



Sure Thou, Almighty, canst not act 

From cruelty or wrath ! 
Oh, free my weary eyes from tears. 

Or close them fast in death! 

But if I must afflicted be, 

To suit some wise design; 
Then man my soul with firm resolves, 

To bear and not repine!" 



And this prayer written "in the prospect of death. 

"O Thou unknown, Almighty Cause 
Of all my hope and fear. 
In whose dread presence, ere an hour. 
Perhaps I must appear! 

If I have wander'd in those paths 

Of life I ought to shun; 
As something, loudly, in my breast. 

Remonstrates I have done; 

Thou know'st that Thou has form'd me 

With passions wild and strong; 
And listening to their witching veice 

Has often led me wrong. 

Where human weakness has come short. 

Or frailty stept aside. 
Do Thou, All-good! for such Thou art. 

In shades of darkness hide. 

Where with intention I have err'd. 

No other plea I have. 
But, Thou art good; and goodness still 

Delighteth to forgive." 



In none of his poems does he call God "Father." 
The Christian name for God is found in his letters, but 
nowhere else. He speaks of him as "Almig-hty Cause," 
"All Good," "Author of Life," "Great Governor of all 
below," "Omnipotent Divine." He is a theist. He 

declares 

"An atheist's laugh's a poor exchange 
For Deity ofifended." 

12 



And yet in an Epistle to David Sillar he has a 
beautiful stanza about his Jean, in which he addresses 
God, 

'"O Thou, whose very self art love!" 



Scant indeed are his allusions to Jesus Christ. In 
a letter to Mrs. Dunlop, Dec. 13, 1789, he writes : 

"Jesus Christ, thou amiablest of cliaracters ! I trust Thou 
are no impostor, and that thy revelation of blissful scenes 
of existence beyond death and the grave is not one of the 
many impositions which time after time have been palmed 
on credulous mankind. I trust that in Thee "shall all the 
families of the earth be blessed," by being yet connected 
together in a better world, where every tie that bound heart 
to heart, in this state of existence, shall be, far beyond our 
present conceptions, more endearing." 



Burns seems far more familiar with sin and the 
devil than with righteousness and the Deity. His 
"Address to the Deil" embodies the traditional 
Miltonian Satan, with touches of current peasant 
notions, and .pulpit ideas of his nocturnal visits to the 
trysting places with which Burns was familiar. As 
for sin, he had no philosophy of it, but a vast experience 
of its terrible reality. He knows it sorely. Read this 
written "in the prospect of death." Only bitter experi- 
ence could have penned it: 

"For guilt, for guilt, my terrors are in arms; 

I tremble to approach an angry God, 
And justly smart beneath His sin-avenging rod. 

Fain would I say, 'Forgive my foul offence !' 

Fain promise never more to disobey; 
But should my Author health again dispense, 
Again I might desert fair Virtue's way; 
Again in folly's path might go astray; 

Again exalt the brute and sink the man; 
Then how should I for heavenly mercy pray, 

Who act so counter heavenly mercy's plan? 
Who sin so oft have mourn'd, yet to temptation ran." 

13 



As to the future Burns often expressed himself. 
He strongly believed in a life beyond the grave. In 
1789 he writes to one whose name is not given, and 
addresses Ferguson who is dead: 

"If there be a life beyond the grave, which I trust there is; 
and if there be a good God presiding over all nature, which 
I am sure there is; thou art now enjoying existence in a 
glorious world, where worth of the heart alone is distinction 
in the man; where riches, deprived of all their pleasure-pur- 
chasing powers, return to their native sordid matter; where 
titles and honours are the disregarded reveries of an idle, 
dream ; and where the heavy virtue, which is the negative con- 
sequence of steady dulness, and those thoughtless, though 
often destructive, follies, which are the unavoidable aberra- 
tions of frail human nature, will be thrown into equal oblivion 
as if they had never been!" 

To Mrs. Dunlop the same year : 

"Religion, my dear friend, is the true comfort! A strong 
persuasion in a future state of existence; a proposition so 
obviously probable that, setting revelation aside ; every nation 
and people, so far as investigation has reached, for at least 
near four thousand years, have in some mode or other firmly 
believed it. In vain would we reason and pretend to doubt. 
I have myself done so to a very daring pitch; but when I 
reflected that I was opposing the most ardent wishes and the 
most darling hope of good men, and flying in the face of all 
human belief in all ages, I was shocked at my own conduct." 

To Mr. Cunningham the next year : 

"I hate a man that wishes to be a Deist; but I fear every 
fair unprejudiced inquirer must in some degree be a sceptic. 
It is not that there are any very staggering arguments against 
the immortality of man; but, like electricity, phlogiston, 
&c., the subject is so involved in darkness that we want 
data to go upon. One thing frightens me much; that we are 
to live forever, seems too good news to be true. That we 
are to enter into a new scene of existence, where, exempt 
from want and pain, we shall enjoy ourselves and our friends 
without satiety or separation — how much should I be indebted 
to any one who could fully assure me that this was certain; 

Burns believed in man, and that is a large part of 
the religion of Jesus who had the optimism to hope 

14 



that he could reach the dregs, and save the flotsam and 
jetsam of the race. "The Jolly Beggars," and "Man 
was made to Mourn," and "Is there, for Honest Pov- 
erty?" and many other expressions reveal his love for 
man as man. His famous lines are quoted all over the 

world : 

"The rank is but the guinea's stamp, 
The Man's the gowd for a' that." 

"Then let us pray that come if may — 

As come it will for a' that — 
That sense and worth, o'er a' the earth. 

May bear the gree, and a' that; 
For a' that, and a' that, 

It's comin' yet for a' that, 
That man to man, the warld o'er, 

Shall brothers be for a' that." 

And these two ideals, the worth of the individual, and 
human brotherhood are distinctly Christian teachings. 
But the Calvinism of Burns' day did not do them 
justice. 

HI. Burns' attifudc toivards the Church is itnmis- 
takable. The minister and session of the Church to 
which he belonged had properly protected its reputa- 
tion and discipline by forcing the young libertine to 
submit to the penalties prescribed for such flagrant 
derelictions as his. The effect of this discipline upon 
Burns was not at all redemptive. He needed love, not 
castigation. But beyond this personal reason for vin- 
dictiveness there were two other reasons that animated 
his satires on current ecclesiasticism, both of which we 
must approve. First, his growing mind, so absolutely 
sincere, could not tolerate the artificial doctrine he 
had been taught; and second, his thoroughly trans- 
parent nature could not brook the hypocrisy in the lives 
of many church members. Three things, his experience 
of church discipline, his honest intellectual life, and his 
hatred of shams combined to produce satires that stand 
unsurpassed in their class. The list is long. 

15 



In "The Twa Herds" he describes two preachers, 
who had been intimate friends, quarrelling over parish 
boundaries. In this satire he names no less than eleven 
ministers. 

"O Moodie man, and wordy Russell, 
How could you raise so vile a bustle, 
Ye'll see how New-Light herds will whistle, 

And think it fine: 
The Lord's cause ne'er gat sic a twistle 

Sin' I hae min'. 

What flock wi' Moodie's flock could rank, 
Sae hale and hearty every shank? 
Nae poison'd sour Arminian stank 

He let them taste. 
Frae Calvin's well, aye clear, they drank — 

Oh, sic a feast!" 

They Orthodoxy yet may prance. 
And Learning in a woody' dance. 
And that fell cur ca'd Common Sense, 

That bites sae sair. 
Be banish'd o'er the sea to France: 

Let him bark there." 



'Halter. 



In ''Holy Willie's Prayer," he satirizes the petition 
of William Fisher, a drunkard and libertine, who had 
been active in denying Burns' friend, Gavin Hamilton, 
church privileges because he made a journey on 
Sunday, and on another Sunday got one of his servants 
to take in some potatoes from the garden. It is the 
prayer of a 33d degree Pharisee, as Burns writes it. 
And in the "Epitaph on Holy Willie," he addresses the 
Devil, closing as follows : 

But hear me, sir, deil as ye are, 

Look something to your credit; 
A coof" like him wad stain your name, 
If it were kent ye did it." 

2Fool. 

16 



In "The Ordination," he takes off the devotion to 
traditionalism, and the hobbies of ministers who tor- 
ment candidates for the pastorate. He names some 
of them. Hear one stanza that reflects Burns' con- 
sciousness of his discipline: 

"There, try his mettle on the creed, 

And bind him down wi' caution. 
That stipend is a carnal weed 

He taks but for the fashion; 
And gie him owre the flock to feed. 

And punish each transgression; 
Especial, rams that cross the breed, 

Gie them sufficient threshin, 
Spare them nae day." 

In his "Address to the Unco Guid, or the Rigidly 
Righteous" he satirizes those complacent saints who 
spend their time in pointing out the sins of others. 

"Ye see your state wi' theirs compared, 

And shudder at the nif¥er,^ 
But cast a moment's fair regard, 

What maks the mighty differ? 
Discount what scant occasion gave. 

That purity ye pride in, 
And (what's aft mair than a' the lave) 

Your better art o' hiding. 

Then gently scan your brother man, 

Still gentler sister woman; 
Though they may gang a kennin'^ wrang, 

To step aside, is human: 
One point must still be greatly daik, 

The moving why they do it : 
And just as lamely can ye mark 

How far perhaps they rue it. 

Who made the heart, 'tis He alone 

Decidedly can try us; 
He knows each chord — its various tone. 

Each spring — its various bias: 
Then at the balance let's be mute, 

We never can adjust it; 
What's done we partly may compute. 

But know not what's resisted." 



^Comparison. 
2A little bit. 



17 



In "The Holy Fair," the keenest of all his diatribes, 
he satirizes what had become a scandal and disgrace to 
the Church, the tattle, and giddiness, the social abuses 
that had sprung- up about the observance of the Holy 
Communion. Here also he names many ministers. 
Hear his description of Hoodie's sermon : 

"Hear how he clears the points o' faith 
Wi' rattlin' and wi' thumpin'! 
Now meekly calm, now wild in wrath, 

He's stampin' and he's jumpin'! 
His lengthen'd chin, his turn'd-up snou.. 

His eldritch^ squeal, and gestures, 
Oh, how they fire the heart devout, 
Like cantharidian plasters, 
On sic a day!" 



^Unearthly. 

And his comment on the result of the day's doings: 

"How mony hearts this day converts 
O' sinners and o' lasses! 
Their hearts o' stane, gin night, are gane,' 

As saft as ony flesh is. 
There's some are fou o' love divine; 

There's some are fou o' brandy; 
And mony jobs that day begin 
May end in houghmagandy" 
Some ither day." 



*Gone. 
^Childbirth. 

Hear how he described the love of dogma mingled 
with the neglect of ethics, in "A Dedication to Gavin 
Hamilton." It is keen irony : 

"Morality thou deadly bane. 
Thy tens o' thousands thou hast slain! 
Vain is his hope whose stay and trust is 
In moral mercy, truth, and justice! 

No — stretch a point to catch a plack;^ 

Abuse a brother to his back: 

Steal through a winnock' frae a whore. 

But point the rake that taks the door. 

Be to the poor like ony whunstane, 

And baud their noses to the grunstane. 

Ply every art o' legal thieving; 

No matter, stick to sound believing. 

18 



Learn three-mile prayers, and half-mile graces, 
Wi' weel-spread looves,^ and lang wry faces; 
Grunt up a solemn, lengthen'd groan, 
And damn a' parties but your own; 
I'll warrant then, ye're nae deceiver — 
A steady, sturdy, staunch believer." 

'A coin, one-third of a penny. 

^Vindow 

'Palms of hands. 

In "The Kirk's Alarm," he described the conster- 
nation of the theologians over the alleged heterodoxy 
of McGill, and Dalrymple, two ministers of Ayr. Here 
also he mentions many names. 

"Orthodox, orthodox, 

Wha believe in John Knox, 
Let me sound an alarm to your conscience — 

There's a heretic blast 

Has been blawn i' the wast. 
That what is not sense must be nonsense. 

Doctor Mac,' Doctor Mac, 

You should stretch on a rack 
To strike evil doers wi' terror; 

To join faith and sense, 

Upon ony pretence, 
Is heretic, damnable error. 

Calvin's sons, Calvin's sons. 

Seize your spiritual guns. 
Ammunition you never can need; 

Your hearts are the stuflf 

Will be powther enough, 
And your skulls are storehouses o' lead. 

Poet Burns, Poet Burns. 

Wi' your priest-skelping turns. 
Why desert ye your auld native shire? 

Your Muse is a gipsy — 

E'en though she were tipsy. 
She could ca' us nae waur than we are." 



'McGill. 



In his "Elegy on Peg Nicholson," a "good bay 
mare" that belonged to his friend, Burns closes with a 
stanza that expressed his contempt for the people that 
stood the Auld-Light ministry. 

"Peg Nicholson was a good bay mare. 
And the priest he rode her sair; 
And much oppressed and bruised she was 
As priest-rid cattle are." 

19 



In "Death and Dr. Hornbook," he expresses his 
opinion of some preachers in the following fashion : 

"Some books are lies fra end to end 
And some great lies were never penn'd: 
E'en ministers, they hae been kenn'd. 

In holy rapture, 
A rousing whid^ at times to vend. 
And nail't wi' Scripture." 



'Lie. 



Burns at the request of his friend Hamilton 
brought him the text of a sermon he heard a minister 
preach. It was "And they shall go forth and grow up 
like calves of the stall," Mai. 4 :2. On this sermon he 
wrote "The Calf." Listen to these stanzas : 

"Right, sir! your text I'll prove it true. 
Though heretics may laugh; 
For instance, there's yoursel just now, 
God knows, an unco calf ! 

And should some patron be so kind 

And bless you wi' a kirk, 
I doubt na, sir, but then we'll find 

Ye're still as great a stirk.^ 

And when ye're number'd wi' the dead. 

Below a grassy hillock, 
\/i' justice they may mark your head, 
'Here lies a famous bullock!'" 



'A one-year-old bullock. 

In a letter to a New-Light minister, Rev. John 
M'Math, enclosing a copy of "Holy Willie's Prayer," 
he writes his opinion of the Auld-Light preachers : 

"But I gae mad at their grimaces, 
Their sighin', cantin', grace-proud faces. 
Their three-mile prayers, and half-mile graces; 

Their raxin'^ conscience, 
Whase greed, revenge, and pride disgraces 

Waur nor° their nonsense. 

20 



O Pope, had I thy satire's darts, 
To gie the rascals their deserts, 
I'd rio their rotten, hollow hearts, 

And tell aloud, 
Their jugglin' hocus-pocus arts, 

To cheat the crowd. 

God knows, I'm no the thing I should be, 
Nor am I even the thing I could be. 
But twenty times I rather would be 

An atheist clean. 
Than under gospel colours hid be 

Just for a screen." 



'Stretching. 
^Worse than. 



All these things and others were not aimed at the 
Church, still less at religion itself, but were deadly 
shots at ministerial shams, at theological fictions, 
human make-believes, and noisome fungi that had 
attached themselves to the tree of life. Read this from 
his letter to M'Math : 

"All hail. Religion! maid divine! 
Pardon a Muse sae mean as mine, 
Who, in her rough imperfect line, 

Thus daurs to name thee; 
To stigmatise false friends of thine 
Can ne'er defame thee. 

O Ayr! my dear, my native ground, 
Within thy presbyterial bound, 
A candid liberal band is found 

Of public teachers, 
As men, as Christians too, renown'd, 

And manly preachers." 

The movement to rationalize the current theology 
was called "Common Sense." It was ridiculed as heresy 
as are all movements away from the unbelievable pro- 
ducts of literalism, and of mechanical interpretation of 
the Scriptures. With this movement, espoused by a 
faction that came to be called "New-Lights," in dis- 
tinction from the orthodox "Auld-Lights," Burns was 

21 



in hearty sympathy. A most amusing description of 
the difference between Auld-Lights and New-Lights, 
ilhistrated by their contradictory opinions about the 
moon will be found in the Postscript to his delightful 
"Epistle to William Simpson." Many regret that these 
satires were written. But such critics fail to realize the 
reasons as given above, and also the good they did in 
laying bare Pharisaism and pretense. Inevitably they 
produced in the minds of some persons coarse and pro- 
fane thoughts about sacred things. There are always 
some who cannot distinguish between religion and its 
vehicles and expressions. But Burns was a photog- 
rapher here also. There is no evidence that he exagger- 
ated conditions. Moreover, he carefully distinguished 
between the genuine and the counterfeit, and aimed to 
retire from circulation what he thought was spurious. 
Against religion itself he uttered not a word of ridicule. 
He tore off only its current provincial and grotesque 
garments. In proof of this remember that "The Cotter's 
Saturday Night," which Lockhart and many others 
deem his best poem, was written by the same heart and 
hand, and about the same time as "The Holy Fair," his 
most effective satire. Because he could honestly praise 
his father's religion and reverence for the Bible, he was 
forced to condemn pretence and irreverent misuse of 
the Scriptures. He told the truth, and that is what 
hurt. There was often antagonism between Scotch 
verse and Scotch theology. How interesting it would 
be if we could collect all that he wrote about Moodie, 
and see how the preacher Burns so cordially despised 
appeared to the poet. In all this Burns really per- 
formed a service for which religion should always be 
thankful. If good people are the "salt of the earth," 
and religion is really the saving factor in social life, 
the uncovering of sham living and thinking in any age 
is a social service. The weaklings who are fed on the 
pap of ages, who walk the way of life staked out by 
pious aristocrats that assume to regulate the paths of 

22 



the multitude, who jog along therein to the age-old 
drum beat of a hierarchy, who prattle and chatter the 
vocabulary of cant, who fuss over millinery and 
genuflections, who row over shibboleths, who think to 
please God with the holy stink of an incense pot, who 
confuse form with substance, who substitute creed- 
mongering for righteousness, will always squirm when 
any realist tears away mere accidents in order to reveal 
essence. Yet this method often seems to be the only 
way to emancipation. The process is painful to many, 
but salutary. 

IV. Burns' ideas of religion. It was a true 
judgment of Burns that religion itself is something 
more vital than theories about the inspiration of the 
Bible, and the logic and syllogisms of theologians, and 
church membership. He saw all this confused with 
religion. However much or little may be lacking in his 
conceptions of what religion is will depend upon the 
standards of the critic. There are, however, utterances 
of Burns that prove that he carried his characteristic 
sincerity and transparency into his ideas of religion. 
He writes to Mr. Cunningham, "But of all nonsense, 
religious nonsense is the most nonsensical." 

He describes his atonement in his marriage with 
Jean Armour, in this language in a letter to the Roman 
Catholic Bishop Geddes : 

"In that first concern, the conduct of man, there was 
ever but one side on which I was habitually blamable, and 
there I have secured myself in the way pointed out by nature 
I and nature's God. I was sensible that, to so helpless a 
creature as a poor poet, a wife and family were encumbrances, 
which a species of prudence would bid him shun, but when 
the alternative was, being at eternal warfare with myself on 
account of habitual follies, to give them no worse name, which 
no general example, no licentious wit, no sophistical infidelity, 
would, to me, ever justify, I must have been a fool to have 
hesitated, and a madman to have made another choice. Besides, 
I had in "my Jean" a long and much-loved fellow-creature's 
happiness or misery among my hands — and who could trifle 
with such a deposit?" 

23 



In a letter to Mr. Macauley, of Dumbarton, con- 
cerning his home Hfe he writes : 

"As I am entered into the holy state of matrimony, I 
trust my face is turned completely Zion ward; And as it is 
a rule with all honest fellows to repeat no grievances, I hope 
that the little poetic licences of former days will of course 
fall under the oblivious influence of some good natured statute 
of celestial prescription. In my family devotion, which, like 
a good Presbyterian, I occasionally give to my household 
folks, I am extremely fond of the psalm, " Let not the errors 
of my youth," etc., and that other; "Lo! children are 
God's heritage," &c., in which last Mrs. Burns, who by 
the by has a glorious "wood-note wild," at either old song or 
psalmody, joins me with the pathos of Handel's 'Messiah.' " 

He states his creed in a letter to Mrs. Dimlop, June 
21, 1789: 

"I have just heard Mr. Kirkpatrick preach a sermon. He 
is a man famous for his benevolence, and I revere him, but 
from such ideas of my Creator, good Lordj deliver me! 
Religion, my honoured friend, is surely a simple business, as 
it equally concerns the ignorant and the learned, the poor 
and the rich. That there is an incomprehensible great Being, 
to whom I owe my existence, and that He must be intimately 
acquainted with the operations and progress of the eternal 
machinery, and consequent outward deportment of this crea- 
ture which He has made — these are, I think, self-evident 
propositions. That there is a real and eternal distinction 
between virtue and vice, and consequently, that I am an 
accountable creature; that, from the seeming nature of the 
human mind, as well as from the evident imperfection, nay, 
positive injustice, in the administration of affairs, both in the 
natural and moral worlds, there must be a retributive scene 
of existence beyond the grave, must, I think, be allowed by 
every one who will give himself a moment's reflection. I will 
go farther, and affirm that, from the sublimity, excellence, 
and purity of His doctrine and precepts, unparalleled by all 
the aggregated wisdom and learning of many preceding ages, 
though to appearance, He himself was the obscurest and most 
illiterate of our species — therefore Jesus Christ was from 
God." 

He boldly judges himself in this letter in these 
words : 

'Whatever mitigates the woes or increases the happiness 
of others, this is my criterion of goodness; and whatever 

24 



injures society at large or any individual in it, this is my 
measure of iniquity." 



The next year he writes to Mr, Hill : 

"God knows I am no saint; I have a whole host of follies 
and sins to answer for, but if I could, and I believe 1 do it as 
far as I can, I would wipe away all tears from all eyes." 

His view of Life is expressed in the "Lines Written 
in Friars' Carse Hermitage, on the Banks of the Nith," 
Jinie, 1783 : 

"Life is but a day at most, 
Sprung from night, in darkness lost; 
Day, how rapid in its flight — 
Day, how few must see the night; 
Hope not sunshine every hour, 
Fear not clouds will always lower. 
Happiness is but a name, 
Make content and ease thy aim; 
Ambition is a meteor gleam; 
Fame an idle, restless dream: 
Pleasures, insects on the wing, 
Round Peace, the tenderest flower of Spring! 
Those that sip the dew alone. 
Make the butterflies thy own; 
Those that would the bloom devour. 
Crush the locusts — save the flower, 
For the future be prepared, 
Guard whatever thou canst guard: 
But, thy utmost duly done, 
Welcome what thou canst not shun. 
Follies past give thou to air. 
Make their consequence thy care: 
Keep the name of man in mind, 
And dishonour not thy kind. 
Reverence with lowly heart 
Him whose wondrous work thou art; 
Keep His goodness still in view. 
Thy trust — and thy example, too," 



It is doubtful whether he improved these lines by 
their second version five years later, 1788. 

25 



Burns' "Epistle to a Young Friend" (Andrew 
Aiken) is full of the soundest ethics, and should be 
committed to memory by every young man. As every- 
thing else it is autobiographical. Every stanza is rich. 
I quote only two : 

"The sacred lowe o' weel-placed love. 

Luxuriantly indulge it; 
But never tempt the illict rove, 

Though naething should divulge it: 
I w^aive the quantum o' the sin, 

The hazard of concealing; 
But, och! it hardens a' w^ithin, 

And petrifies the feeling! 

When ranting round in Pleasure's ring, 

Religion may be blinded; 
Or if she gie a random sting, 

It may be little minded; 
But when on life we're tempest-driven, 

A conscience but a canker — 
A correspondence fix'd wi' Heaven 

Is sure a noble anchor!" 

The distinctively Christian note is very faint in 
Burns. He has little to say about the world's Master 
of the Art of living. But there are many traces of the 
influence of Jesus Christ upon his thinking and ideals. 
Simple goodness, actual, not the theological fiction of 
imputed righteousness; the pity and mercy of God, 
that came in his hours of remorse and gloom, not the 
relentless judicial deity of Calvinism ; the worth of 
every man, not the celestial value of an elect few which 
he heard proclaimed from the pulpit of the Old-Light ; 
the brotherhood of men, not the distance between them 
illustrated by the Pharisaism he saw ; these are lines 
of the teachings of Jesus that he felt over against the 
hard legalism preached in the orthodox kirk. 

Burns treats seriously all religious matters. He is 
no less in earnest in his Cotter's Saturday Night than in 
the Holy Fair. His vitriolic words are never directed 
against the Bible, nor sane thinking in religion, nor 

26 



consistent Christian living. All these he glorifies. But 
he pierces every bubble blown by bombast. For him 
the body of divinity does not consist in the tomes of 
Calvinism studied by the theologians of his day, nor 
in the sermons so repugnant to his intellectual self- 
respect, but in any group of men and women who can- 
not think straight and walk crooked at the same time. 
He wanted a theology that differed from that on the 
mediaeval disk run into the eighteenth century pulpit 
victrola. The wave of intellectual sincerity that was 
part of the French Revolution no doubt sent its spray 
to Scotland. But Burns' own soul, that would nowhere 
screen itself, was ready for the moistening of the Gallic 
tide. It did not wash him from his moorings into 
infidelity. Had his personal life corresponded with his 
religious ideals he would have been Scotland's greatest 
religious reformer. Knox freed it from the spell of 
priestcraft. Burns would have freed it from the blight 
of dead orthodoxy. But his vices made him only a 
critic, not a constructive power. He unmasked hypo- 
crisy. He plunged his keen rapier up to the hilt 
into caricatures of religion. He cartooned the theolog- 
ical parrots so that they became ridiculous. He was an 
expert in destruction. One can not help trying to 
imagine what effect his tremendous energy, confined to 
assault upon the weakness of the religion of his day, 
would have accomplished had he been equally strong 
in illustrating in his own character and life the positive 
constructive ideals he so nobly expressed. He believed 
in God, but God was not the controlling power in his 
life. He glorified the Bible, but did not incarnate its 
ethical and religious ideals. He wrote nobly of the life 
beyond the grave, but had no plan for his own life that 
extended beyond his tomb. All this so far as his writ- 
ings and life show. 

Yet we dare not judge him finally. Who is bold 
enough to limit the love of the Father that is exhaust- 
less in its pity for those "who sin so oft have mourn'd, 
yet to temptation ran." Hear Burns' prayer: 

27 



"Oh, Thou great Governor of all below! 

If I may dare a lifted eye to Thee, 
Thy nod can make the tempest cease to blow, 

Or still the tumult of the raging sea; 
With that controlling power assist even me, 

Those headlong furious passions to conhne. 
For all unfit I feel my powers to be, 

To rule their torrent in the allow'd line: 
Oh, aid me with Thy help, Omnipotence Divine." 

The bitter tooth of remorse lacerated his soul. But 
excesses had weakened his will. His self-control shriv- 
elled. He stands before us as almost a classic example 
of a perpetual struggle between virtue and passion, 
a continuous moving picture show of the strife between 
a mind whose ethical ideals are evermore growing and 
clarifying, and a body diseased and unable to resist its 
habits, a human tennis ball flying back and forth 
between the divine and the diabolical. He wrote as he 
lived, not from ambition but from feeling. All he 
wrote and did was a sample of himself. He was ever- 
more autobiographical. We can do no better than to 
quote from the epitaph he wrote for himself ten years 
before he died. When he wrote it he penned both his- 
tory and prophecy : 

"Is there a man, whose judgment clear. 
Can others teach the course to steer. 
Yet runs himself life's mad career 

Wild as the wave? 
Here pause — and, through the starting tear, 

Survey this grave. 

The poor inhabitant below 

Was quick to learn, and wise to know. 

And keenly felt the friendly glow, 

And softer flame, 
But thoughtless follies laid him low. 

And stain'd his name! 

Reader, attend — whether thy soul 
Soars fancy's flights beyond the pole. 
Or darkling grubs this earthly hole. 

In low pursuit; 
Know, prudent, cautious self-control 

Is wisdom's root." 

28 



T N THE room of the Burns Club of St. Louis is the original 
of "Lines to Burns" by Chang Yow Tong. Of the varied 
collection of Burnsiana none is more prized. Chang Yow 
Tong was a highly cultivated member of the Chinese Imperial 
Commission. He wrote in 1904 "Human Progress as shown 
at the World's Fair in St. Louis," dedicating the volume of 
graceful verse "To Universal Peace." The opening of the 
Exposition drew from him "China's Message to Columbia." 
In sentiment and composition these were of no ordinary char- 
acter, but in his "Lines to Burns" the poetic genius of Chang 
Yow Tong found its most notable expression; it flamed with 
the spirit of the bard. The inspiration of the "Lines" was the 
coming dedication of the replica of the Burns Cottage at the 
World's Fair; that ceremony was on the 24th of June, 1904, 
Bannockburn Battle day. The address of dedication was 
delivered by Sir Hugh Gilzean-Reid, president of the World's 
Press Parliament. Chang Yow Tong was one of the guests. 



29 



' I ""HESE "Lines to Burns," reproduced in facsimile of the 
Chinese poet's autographed copy, are treasured by Burns' 
Clubs in all parts of the world. They were sent on the one 
hundred and fifty-third anniversary with the greeting of the 
Burns Club of St. Louis to members of the Burns Federation. 
From Kilmarnock, Thomas Amos, honorary secretary of the 
Federation, wrote: 

"I have been asked by the office bearers of the Federation 
to express to your club our gratitude for your kindness in 
sending such a unique greeting. I can assure you it has 
been much valued. From newspapers which I have received 
I see that excellent poem has been read at Burns Clubs in 
Scotland, England and Ireland. To me it is wonderful that 
an Oriental has so caught the spirit of Burns and has seen 
right into the heart of his teachings. At our great gathering 
in Glasgow in September, I read the poem to more than three 
hundred delegates from all parts of the United Kingdom and 
it was received with great applause. A tribute to our bard 
such as you have sent makes us feel that the wished for time 
"when man to man the world o'er shall brithers be for a' that" 
is nearer than we imagine." 



30 



LINES TO BURNS 

By Chang Yow Tong, 

Cbrnese Imperial Commissioner 

Inspired by the Burns Cottage, World's Fair, 1904 

O! kindred soul of humble birth, 
Divine, though of the lowly earth, 
Forgotten thou art not to-day. 
Nor yet neglected — here's thy bay! 

Thy cottage-home, hid from the proud, 
Nor thought of by the vulgar crowd 
In thine own time, has claimed a place 
On which the world's eyes now gaze. 

Nor changed its homely, rugged lines. 
Where closely crept thy tender vines; 
But men have changed: nor yet deplore- 
Where once they spurned we now adore. 

Thy life and work and destiny 
Contain a meaning deep for me; — 
Though fame be darkened by a fate. 
The laurel-wreath comes soon or late. 

Thy splendid fame shall ever rise 
With undimm'd glory o'er the skies; — 
To struggling souls a hope shall yield 
On sailing seas and ploughing field. 

I am a foreign, unknown bard, 
Whose devious course is rough and hard; 
But cheered at times by thy sweet song, 
I sing away, nor mind the throng. 

Like thee, I'll toil with manly hand, 
Like thee, by manhood ever stand; 
And, guided by thy spirit brave. 
Shall wait for verdict at the grave. 



31 



"IV/T ID WAY in a mile of St. Louis culture stands the quaint 
■^^•*- Artists' Guild. This mile begins with the monumental 
entrances of Westmoreland and Portland Places, through 
which are vistas of parking between double drives bordered 
by mansions. Then come towering apartment houses of the 
highest class. A few steps farther, on the left are the great 
gateways of Kingsbury Place and Washington Terrace, while 
eastward Westminster and Washington Boulevards seem- 
ingly narrow in the distance to lanes with overhanging trees. 
Beyond is a group of churches, varied in architecture and 
creed — Presbyterian, Christian, Unitarian, Congregational and 
Episcopalian. Sandwiched between two of them is the club 
house and art gallery of the Artists' Guild, the home of the 
Burns Club and of the Franklin Club. In close alignment 
are the Soldan High School and the William Clark Grammar 
School, latest and best of public school architecture and 
equipment in the country. Clustered opposite and in the 
immediate vicinity are the Smith Academy and the Manual 
Training School of Washington University and two of the 
academies of the Catholic sisterhoods — Visitation and St. 
Philomena. Windermere and Cabanne Places, with their fine 
residences, are laterals. Cabanne Library, the Model Police 
Station and the great St. Ann Asylum complete this mile of 
St. Louis culture. Well-named Union Avenue! What a 
fitting center for a shrine to Robert Burns! 



32 



The Burns Club of St. Louis is rich in Burnsiana. Among 
the relics which furnish the unique club room are a table 
which was owned by Burns when he lived at Dumfries, a 
table from the Tarn O'Shanter inn, a third table made of wood 
from St. Michael's church at Dumfries, a little chair which 
was the favorite seat of Burns in his childhood, another chair 
from the cottage in Ayr and the old arm chair of Mrs. Tarn 
O'Shanter, 

Where sits our sulky, sullen dame. 
Gathering her brows like gathering storm. 
Nursing her wrath to keep it warm. 

The great chimney and fireplace at one end of the long 
club room provide the ingle-nook which is occupied by an 
old spinning wheel and reel of the Armour family. On the 
opposite side is the "dresser" or sideboard with an array of 
the Club's tableware — quaint bowls and plates and ashets. 

Upon the mantel, over the fireplace, are candlesticks of 
Burns' time, and near by hang "Bonnie Jean's" iron holder 
and the "girdle" on which the cakes were baked. "Bonnie 
Jean's" milking stool, a cupboard and table which belonged to 
a family where Burns visited much, a chair that was used 
often by the poet, and the eight-day clock one hundred and 
thirty years old give atmosphere to this home of the Burns 
Club of St. Louis. 

The walls of the chamber are hung with reminders of 
Burns. There are the original drawings made by John Burnet 
to illustrate Tam O'Shanter, an oil painting of the Burns 
Cottage at the World's Fair, facsimiles of many of the best 
known poems of Burns in his handwriting, prints and sketches 
of Scottish scenes made familiar by the poet. 

No St. Louis Night wi' Burns passes without additions to 
this priceless collection of Burnsiana. 



33 



CT. LOUIS was the first city outside of the British Isles to 
dedicate a permanent memorial in marble to Robert Burns. 
On the 9th of June, 1866, a life size bust of Burns was un- 
veiled with fitting ceremonies in the Mercantile Library. It 
was the work of the sculptor, William Brodie, R. S. A. The 
bust stands on a mahogany pedestal in which are panel 
scenes from The Cotter's Saturday Night, Tarn O'Shanter and 
Auld Brig o' Doon. This memorial was presented to the 
Mercantile Library by the Caledonian Society of St. Louis. 
Fourteen years after St. Louis had paid tribute to Burns, 
a memorial was unveiled in New York City. Other Ameri- 
can cities have since honored the poet in a similar manner. 
At the St. Louis World's Fair was erected the first replica of 
the cottage in which Burns was born. The cottage was taken 
to the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland. Prompted by 
the great interest shown in the "auld clay biggin'," other 
cities have erected reproductions of the Burns cottage. 



34 



TO ROBERT BURNS 

By Orrick Johns 

Read at the meeting of the Buros Club of St. Louis, on the 
anniversary of the poet's birth, January 25, 1913 

Burns, your name is on the tongue 

Of the multitude to-day, 
But the world you knew when young 

Goes upon her wonted way. 

Like a painted hoyden, she 

Gives her love where gold is plenty; 
Nor has changed a jot or tittle 

Since your years were two-and-twenty. 

Burns, from cot and hovel now, 
Haply poets are upspringing. 

But the world would not allow 
They are any good for singing. 

They will rhyme and love and labor 
As you did by Dumfries town. 

Hate the Kirk and curse the neighbor, 
Call the wrath of Heaven down 

On the unco guid, and lordly — 
Fight the plucky, worldly fight; 

And at bottom find a healthy 
Streak of sacred human light! 

That's what you, man, long were doing 
Far on Scotland's bonny moors. 

Living hard and lightly wooing. 
Learning meanwhile what endures. 

Your good neighbors, maids and men, 

Took you for an idle devil, 
Loved you somewhat now and then, 

Kicked you oft, to make it level. 

And you railed and scorned and scoffed 
Out of woe and passion pouring 

Words that wing the heart aloft 
Like the lark at daybreak soaring, 

35 



Ah, then, what the devil. Burns! 

Though the poet be untended, 
Though the town in worship turns 

To the fortunate and splendid — 

Soon the word that's truly spoken 
Lodges in the common breast, 

Though by love and living broken 
He who spoke it is at rest! 

Burns, shall we then try to change her, 
The world to poets stern and cruel? — 

Or wish them dauntless hearts in danger, 
To make their fires of starry fuel! 

Damn it, man, the things that hurt you 
Healed you, for you bore them well; 

And if they found you short on virtue. 
Gad, you're singing sweet in Hell! 

Aye, we know you're singing sweetly 
Though the Devil be your theme — 

Far from Doon and Kirk and Cotter, 
Lost in immemorial dream. 



36 



BURNS, THE WORLD POET 

By William Marion Reedy, 
Editor of The Mirror, St. Louis 

January 25, 1912 

EVEN before presenting my apologies for my poor 
effort of this evening, I would express my sincere 
thanks to this assemblage for, not alone the honor of 
its invitation, but for having coerced me into the per- 
formance of a duty that should have been done any 
time these thirty years. Until I was told by Mr. Dick, 
who seems for some time to have adopted me as his 
King Charles' head, so far as concerns this address, that 
I would be expected to say something to the Burns 
Club, I had never read the poems of Robert Burns. 
About thirty years ago, at college, I essayed the task 
and abandoned it. The dialect was too much for me — 
as I doubt not it has been for better men. I remember 
cherishing a theory, which, several times, I advanced 
to one of your most estimable members, Mr. Lehmann, 
in ''wee short hours ayon't the twal," to the effect that 
Burns possessed an advantage over all other poets in 
that in his writing, when he could not find a rhyme in 
one language he took it from another, and so achieved 
a purely adventitious felicity through the mixture of 
the familiar and the strange. I do not know why I 
tell you this, unless it is because I am affected by that 
psychic wave of confession which has swept the coun- 
try, beginning with the McNamaras, in Los Angeles, 
ranging east to Massachusetts and overcoming the 
poisoner of Avis Linnell of Hyannis, ricocheting thence 
to Washington and prompting Henry Watterson to 
proclaim his sin that he had mistaken a schoolmaster 
for a statesman. 

Of course I read about Burns ; one could not well 
help it if one maintained even that remote relation to 

37 



literature implied in conducting a more or less literary 
paper. Even, I wrote about Burns from time to time 
with that fatal facility and felicity of half knowledge, 
or no knowledge, which enables the journalist, by 
means of tags and cliches and generalities, successfully 
to counterfeit omniscience. But, at the word of the 
Burns Club, I have read my Burns and for my continu- 
ing sin of many years, my punishment, involving yours, 
is here and now. 

What shall I say of Burns to you gentlemen who 
know him by heart, who have enshrined him in your 
heart of heart, who have fondled that first edition in 
which his own hand and pen filled out for his friend 
Geddes the lacunae in the poems indicated by asterisks 
or dashes? I ask your pardon for trying to say any- 
thing; but the retribution of my long dereliction must 
be fulfilled. 

It was not, at first, with me as with Keats, on 
first reading Chapman's "Homer" — no new planet 
swam into my ken. I found myself rather in the atti- 
tude of our all too nearly forgotten humorist, Bill Nye, 
when he first witnessed the play of "Hamlet" ; it was very 
good, but it was too full of quotations. As the read- 
ing progressed and the marking of the passages, it was 
borne in upon me how great a poet was Burns by the 
number of his lines that have been practically absorbed 
into the language of the people. There they were, 
enough to make a biggish bibelot — passage after pas- 
sage, so familiar that even I knew them. And often 
these passages were whole poems. Then was impressed 
upon me that Burns is a world-poet, the poet not only 
of the man in the street, but of the poet, and I stood 
like stout Balboa and all his men, viewing the Pacific 
in a mute surprise, "silent upon a peak of Darien." But 
now I rejoice that I dined late at that feast, that I came 
to it with some experience of sin and folly not unlike 
the poet's own. 

38 



The poet has told his life story in his song, and 

told it with a splendid simplicity, in the language of the 

Scots farmer and peasant. When he essays literary 

English, speaking generally, the magic, the glamour 

vanishes. What a life of copious content was that of 

Burns, from the hour when a "blast o' Januar' win' 

blew hansel in on Robin" to the last hour in which he 

passed away after an execration upon the agent, 

Mathew Penn, who was hounding him for a "damned 

haberdasher's" bill. Whatever he did with his life, he 

lived it — every hour of it. He came into the world 

the heir to a remote romantic tradition of sacrifice by 

his ancestors in the cause of the hapless, worthless, but 

fascinating Stuarts. His father was no peasant, but a 

farmer, strong-willed but not "hard," a man of some 

education, of a tendency decidedly generous and 

humane in religious matters, when we contrast it with 

the dour creed of the time and place. His mother was 

more emotional, more sympathetic and she possessed a 

wide knowledge of Scottish folk song, supplemented 

later by a still more encyclopaedic knowledge of that 

subject by an elderly neighbor, Jenny Davidson. Thus 

Burns came, splendidly dowered in head and heart, 

gifted with a grasp, a hunger for all of life. Good sense 

and sentiment, reason and passion, all his days, waged 

a mighty struggle in his heart. The push and the pull 

of these forces gave him the full swing of the pendulum 

— all the ecstacies of life, from rejoicing to regret. His 

spirit seized upon each detail of experience, warmed it, 

fashioned it into forms of perdurable beauty which still 

speak their message to all the children of men. Burns 

had the ink in his veins and as things moved his 

thought or his emotion he wrote them off. Life was 

the matter of his song. 

Yet when a tale comes in my head. 
Or lassies gie my heart a screed, 
As whyles they're like to be my dead, 

(O sad disease!) 
I kittle up my rustic reed: 

It gies me ease. 

39 



Therefore, while I would not minimize the poet's 
woes, I would say that their very intensity made for 
their more perfect expression, in which, even as we, 
the poet himself found an exquisite delight of their 
communicableness. He suffered for his and our gain. 
His early days at the plough's tail, doing a man^s work 
at fifteen, gave him touch with nature, a touch delicate 
or strong, as need was, sure, brief, direct, miraculously 
comprehensive when he imparts his thought to us. No 
great poet wastes so few words as Burns in giving us a 
thought or a picture and no poet's taste is truer at its 
multifarious best. The eye for nature never better 
justified itself than in such a poem as the elegy of 
"Matthew Henderson," the "VVestHn Wind" or "Hallo- 
ween," with their landscapes done in a few strokes, full 
of light and the sense of the goodliness of the world of 
sky and wood and wimpling water and the wee timor- 
ous beasties of the wild, the field and fold. As we read 
that long and painful iliad of the successive failures of 
the Burns farms, were not our hearts light we should 
die, for pity of it, did we not remember that out of it 
all he drew a philosophy and a poetry full of "the hate 
of hate, the scorn of scorn, the love of love." He early 
knew his Bible history, his Pope, his Shakespeare, his 
Locke on the "Human Understanding," and he read Allan 
Ramsay's poems while he followed the plow, distin- 
guishing the sincerity from the fustian, for Schoolmaster 
Murdoch had made him no mean critical vivisectionist. 
Song and sorrow were tenants of his heart in the 
economic tragedy of the farm at Blount Oliphant, but 
the rack-renting factor thereof wrought better than he 
knew, for out of his persecution and extortion sprang 
the poet's never-to-be suppressed sympathy for the 
House of Have-Not as against the House of Have, the 
first utterance of which we find in the "Twa Dogs," 
who are very dog of dog and yet searchers of the 
secrets of man's miseries high and low. After ]\Iount 
Oliphant, Lochlea. Another poor farm ; but if Lochlea 

40 



was unprofitable it was picturesque and Burns could 
steep his soul in scenery. He was now sixteen, he had 
been to dancing school and he was in love — and never 
after out of it. Poor he was, yet kings might have 
envied him the stuff of poetry and youth that was 
working in him, as, certainly, he never envied kings. 
After Lochlea, where the poet's father died, leaving so 
little that Burns and his brother had to claim their 
wages to get something to start life upon anew, after 
Burns' flax-weaving factory had burned to a Bacchic 
accompaniment, came the farm at Mossgiel. But Burns 
had studied life, as youth will, at Irvine and Kirkos- 
wald ; he had met with smugglers and sailors and 
roysterers ; he had found the good fellows who are so 
bad for good fellows ; drink and the doxies fascinated 
him, for his was the temperament that finds generous 
pleasure resistless. He was yet to find that 

Pleasures are like poppies spread, 
You seize the flower, the bloom is shed; 
Or like the snow fa's in the river — 
A moment white then melts forever. 

Much that was bad had Burns learned by this 
time, but one supreme good thing he learned ; the good- 
ness of so-called bad people ; and the meanness or bad- 
ness of self-styled good people came to him shortly 
after, to the dear delight of all the world and the more 
perfect confusion of Hypocrisy, for ever and ever, 
amen. It was at Kirkoswald he was refused by Mary 
Morison, who thought herself too good for him — and 
she but a serving girl. This was not an incident calcu- 
lated to sweeten the poet's disposition, but long after, 
remembering, he forgave her and avenged himself 
nobly in a song in which her name is still sweet in the 
mouths of men. Mossgiel yielded two bad crops, but 
at Mossgiel Burns began to write, and the poetry crop 
was goldenly rich and the landlord could take no toll 
of that in unearned increment. In this time, sore beset 
with trial, harassed by apparent failure, the plowman 

41 



gave ns "Halloween," "To a Mouse," "The Cotter's 
Saturday Night," "The Address to the De'il," "The 
Jolly Beggars," "The Farmer's Salutation," "The Twa 
Dogs," "The Death of Dr. Hornbook," "The Mountain 
Daisy." 'What a sweep, what a reach, what a revel of 
perception, of wit, of tenderness, of humor, of kindness, 
of satire and grotesquerie ! This alone would have set 
up an ordinary poet in immortality. And Burns knew 
he was a poet by this time, and felt the spirit of con- 
secration upon him ; he made now his high resolve to 
do something for "puir auld Scotland" — "to sing a song 
at least." These poems passed from hand to hand, over 
the countryside, and never before was such verse so 
circulated since certain "sugar'd sonnets" of Shake- 
speare's among his friends. They were composed at 
the plow, and then, after the "countra wark," were 
written out, on a plain deal table, in an ill lighted garret 
— an humble workshop to which to-day the world 
repairs as to one of humanity's holy places. And all 
the better was this flash of singing for that through the 
meditations at the plow there flitted the face and form 
and echoes of the voice of Jean Armour. 

Was ever true poetry written without a woman as 
part, if not all, the inspiration? I believe not. The 
great work of the world, in all lines, is usually done 
for, and to, an audience of one — a woman, though not 
necessarily throughout each work the same woman. A 
curious story that of Jean Armour, and in it Burns 
does not always figure well ; he wrote some things 
about her that are infamous, though not more infamous 
than things he wrote later about Mrs. Riddle, whom he 
had offended. But she stung him into song. She and 
her father's treatment of him contributed to the senti- 
ment of the "Mouse" and the "Daisy" a finer strain of 
wistfulness and gave to the satires an added biting 
power. The affair between Jean and Rob became a 
scandal ; it broke into the kirk ; it helped Burns to 
espouse the liberal cause the more heartily in the war 

42 



between the New-Light and Auld-Light clergy?. A 
sordid enough story we should call it now, but it was 
not such then and there, when and where people were 
much nearer the earth than we, though no less earthy, 
Jean was not to blame, or if she was, Burns forgave 
her afterwards and gave up what must have been a fas- 
cinating dream to him — marriage with the clever and 
affectionate Clarinda, Mrs. McLehose, when she should 
have secured a divorce — and ''made a decent woman 
of her," in a re-birth of affection. 

Passionately Burns threw himself into the battle 
for the New-Lights. They represented liberality. They 
were not strict constructionists of the Mosaic law. 
They looked leniently upon life. They did not frown at 
fun. They were in modified revolt against that terrible 
Calvinism, which could never have been bearable in 
Scotland, save for whiskey. The iron theocracy was 
mitigated only by intoxication. The Auld-Lights 
brought Burns' friend Gavin Hamilton to book for 
some breach of discipline ; there was a trial ; Hamilton 
came off triumphant and Burns burst forth in satire — 
"Holy Willie's Prayer," "The Twa Herds," "The Holy 
Fair," "The Address to the Unco Guid." And satire 
never burned deeper — not even the satire of Voltaire. 
Hyprocisy has been the target of almost all of the great 
poets at one time or another, but Burns has given us the 
incarnation of Hypocrisy perfectly and completely scari- 
fied for all time. 

Here were sweet and bitter from the same won- 
drous well of genius. How may one do more than 
merely allude to the sweetness, the humanity, the rich, 
broad humor, the keen clear observation, the richness 
and yet succinctness, the kindness even to dumb 
animals, the good word even for the De'il, the philos- 
ophy, the grotesquerie of the poems first named. It 
cannot be told save in quotation and to tell a tithe of it 
one would have to quote all night. 



"The Cotter's Saturday Night" is the wide world 
idyl of home — the sanest poem of all poems ever writ, 
for Burns poured into it all the blessed memory of his 
own home. It is a picture of poverty, but oh, what a 
richness there beyond all wealth of Ormus and of Ind. 
It is the very ideal of home, the English word for which 
the other languages have no exact equivalent. "Hallo- 
ween" is a poem that is steeped in life at play over the 
mystery of love. Its humor is such that you cut it and 
it bleeds laughter exactly like that which rings in ears 
of memory from our own hay-rides and husking bees 
of the years which the locust hath eaten. 

"The Mouse," the "Daisy," later the Hare, auld 
Mailie, the pet yowe, the mare, the birds, the cattle, 
even the foxes in winter — truly, as one has said, here 
Burns is not second to him of Assisi in love for his little 
brothers, the beasts and plants, the very humblest of 
God's creatures. And the lesson he learned from a 
louse on a lady's bonnet is more worth to the world, I 
do believe, than the one Newton drew, of the ache of 
sphere for sphere, from the impact of an apple on his 
nose. Read "The Jolly Beggars" to-da}^ and then turn 
to our modern realists — Gorki for example. The one is 
human, the other diabolic. The Beggars are all poets 
at least, wicked though they be. They have hearts. 
They have laughter of this world, not like that of dead 
men in hell. They are lovable, not horrible. And that 
poem is palpitant with dramatic power. I am not sure 
that "The Twa Dags" are not vastly more doggy than 
Jack London's. They are as much true beasts as those 
in Kipling's jungle. They talk good sense, good econ- 
omics, and, in a sense, good will, for the whole dialogue 
shows us that the social system does not make for 
happiness anywhere. And their views are an unsur- 
passed commentary upon the land question. Upon the 
whole the debate is "a draw," with the verdict in favor 
of what a man is, not what he has. Rich man not less 
than poor man is caught and ground and soul-spoiled 

44 



and soiled in the gin of a system based upon one man's 
toll upon the labor of another. 

Having scalded his enemies in vitriol, they pilloried 
him in the kirk, enforcing a public penance upon him 
and Jean, she in the role of Hester Prynne of the 
"Scarlet Letter;" the girl's father sets the law upon 
him and he is in hiding when the Kilmarnock edition 
of his poems appears. A copy of the volume is worth 
its weight in gold to-day. And it was printed to raise 
nine pounds sterling to enable the poet to get away to 
Jamaica. Off to the Indies he had been, too, but for a 
letter from Dr. Blacklock of Edinburgh. His passage 
was paid. And the urge was on him because of the 
death of a new love — Highland Mary. He had clean 
forgot his Jean, or remembered her only with bitter- 
ness. Though he married Jean later, he never forgot 
Mary Campbell and years after he voiced his memory 
in two songs that express for all men all lost loves for 
all times — the unapproachable ballad of dear dead 
woman. 

Through Dr. Blacklock Burns went to Edinburgh. 
He was the lion, and at first he liked the Honing, but 
in a little time he began to eat his own heart, which is 
profitable to a poet, but not pleasing to the man. He 
was well received by Dugald Stewart, Lord Monboddo, 
Hugh Blair — lights of the Northern Athens, but all 
echoes, reflections rather, of greater men in London. 
Though they did not know it. Burns o'ertopped them 
all. One little, unnoticed boy met him, and that boy 
Vv^as destined to claim almost equal love and admiration 
with him from Scotland and the world. The boy was 
Walter Scott. But Burns felt the patronage of the 
i)ig men of "Auld Reekie." He carried himself well, 
Ijut he was not deceived as to his status and so he 
looked up his humble friends. In the taverns and in 
the Masonic lodge, breeding place of liberal thought, he 
was the leader. There were wit and wisdom and 
whiskey, and — women of course. Burns took his fling 

45 



at all things Tory, in Church as well as State. And 
feeling his own worth, he could even be jealous-angry 
at Glencairn, to whom he has left such a noble tribute 
of friendship, because that noble paid attention, in his 
presence, to some dunder-pate. There was need of 
money. There was talk of a new edition of the poems. 
Burns applied for a place in the Excise. In April, 1787, 
came the second edition of the poems, but the pub- 
lisher, Creech, was poor pay. Back to Mossgiel by way 
of the Border: and that excursion did him little good 
for it was w^ell washed with liquor most of the way, 
and so, later, with his trip to the Highlands where he 
refreshed all his Jacobic traditions and gave them 
expression most inopportunely for a man looking for a 
place under the Hanoverians. But through it all he 
was brooding divine poesy. 

Back to Edinburgh in the winter of 1787 — and now 
neglected. More embittered than ever, though he got 
a settlement from Creech, he sent £180 to Gilbert, 
married Jean, boasted blithely, "I hae a wife o' my ain," 
and rented Ellisland, near Dumfries. Finally came the 
place in the Excise, at £50 a year. 'Tis good to know 
he was a poor Exciseman, that he passed the hint to 
many a dealer to have the stuff out of the way by the 
time he and the inspector came around. Only the "wife 
and weans" induced him to hold the job. He had to 
watch the farm and ride a wide circuit, and the farm — 
the farm did not pay. Burns, like all the rest of the 
world, worked for the landlord. 

And all this time he was pouring forth a stream of 
song sufficient to drown a world in loveliness. He did 
it for love of love and Scotland. He would take no 
pay for the work. At Ellisland he wrote "Tam 
O'Shanter" in an ecstacy described by his wife — 
an ecstacy that continues to be catching 125 years after. 
The ride is the immortal ride of all rides. This is the 
high water mark of the Burns genius. It is swift and 
direct as an arrow. It is the climax of kindly caricature. 

46 



It is fun as sweet as it is broad. It is a great moral 
lesson, too, and driven home with a laughter more lov- 
ing than that of Rabelais. Here is the best and the 
worst of drinking. The eldritch comic in this perfor- 
mance is unmatched in all literature. It is a great poem 
in this, that it promotes both toping and temperance. 
You can't properly read it and explicate its moral 
against drink and "cutty-sarks" without a swig or two 
of the blend of old Glenlivet or eke of Haig and Haig. 

Ellisland failing, Burns went to Dumfries in the 
Excise. Life was gay — in a fashion — the primrose way 
was a way of withering primroses. Burns was exiled 
from the country, from nature. He was no townsman. 
He had a sharp tongue and he said things he shouldn't 
have said, at the taverns. He said things that sounded 
like treason to the loyal natives. He responded to a 
toast to Pitt with one "to George Washington, a better 
man." He sent to the library a copy of DeLolme's 
"British Construction" with a suggestion that it be "taken 
as a creed of British liberty — until we find a better." He 
wrote an ode in honor of Washington's birthday and, 
in "The Tree of Liberty" he approved strongly the 
guillotining Louis XVI. Burns was a Jacobite by 
romantic tradition, but he was a Republican by his 
reason. He thought he was a Republican at least, but 
what he really was, was democrat — a small d demo- 
crat. 

Alexander Smith, an earlier Stevenson, says Burns 
was Jacobite from sentiment, radical from discontent. 
This is utterly to misread the man and the poet. He 
was Jacobite because he loved the lost cause, because 
the Stuarts were unfortunate, and misfortune never 
appealed to him in vain. But he was not discontented 
when he wrote the lines to the Mouse or those to the 
Daisy or to Auld Mailie or Maggie, or the Hare. All 
these poems breathe sympathy for every living thing. 
Every poem that Burns has written celebrates the com- 
mon people and the common virtues ; even if he praises 

47 



the nobility or gentry it is for that they share the 
common virtues with the honest poor. The democratic 
inspiration of Burns is not his discontent. Indeed he 
never was discontented in the sense that he was a 
malcontent. He did not hate the superior classes. He 
hated their vices and their assumptions. He did not 
see wherein they were superior. He did not see that 
they worked. They looked like parasites to him. For 
money he did not care himself, but only for love and 
light and friendship and honesty and song — evermore 
song. And such songs as he produced in the midst of 
worry, poverty, illness, many duties, no one ever pro- 
duced before. He reeled them off for Johnson and for 
Thomson without asking a penny. It was a labor of 
love, it was done for Scotland. He was not original, 
some say. Granted ; he took his own where he found it, but 
nothing he borrowed he did not improve, nothing he 
touched he did not adorn. Burns was a nature poet, 
without any "return" from the worship of false gods. 
He was before Wordsworth. Burns was the first voice 
in the world, almost, since Villon, who gave poetic 
speech to the thoughts of the common man, even of the 
outcast. Burns' "nature" was a natural nature, not the 
pasteboard pinchback nature of Jean Jacques Rousseau. 
Burns was no sheer sentimentalist. His nature work 
is never overdone. "The pathetic fallacy" had no hold 
upon him. Satirist that he was., like Voltaire, he had 
a vast common sense. His epistle to a young friend, and 
the one to Davie, are examples of this, and in the same 
category comes many another poem and song. Burns' 
judgments, upon himself and others, are always fair, 
when satire is not his aim, and his didactic verse is 
more detailed in its observation, more widely diffused 
in its applicability, and more deeply psychological than 
Polonius' advice to Laertes — for old Polonius is a bore, 
and Burns' preachments have always the salt of humor. 

A sensible man and a democrat? "For a' that," is 
the answer. "The rank is but the guinea's stamp." A 

48 



loving man — a singer of the love of comrades in which 
he antedated our own Whitman. 

But ye whom social pleasure charms 
Whose heart the tide o' kindness warms, 
Who hold your being on the terms 

"Each aid the others" 
Come to my bowl, come to my arms 

My friends, my brothers. 

For thus the royal mandate ran 
When first the human race began 
The social, friendly, honest man 

What e'er he be; 
'Tis he fulfills great nature's plan, 

And none but he. 



At Dumfries came the end, July 21st, 1796. He 
died pestered by collectors, begging a few pounds for 
which he promised the worth in songs. He died worn 
out by living. He had sung Scotland back to some- 
thing like nationhood. He had sung the glories of 
honest manhood, as opposed to hereditary distinction. 
He had proclaimed the divinity of the common man 
and had given the world its most efifective armory 
against bigotry, cant, hyprocisy and class separatism. 
He gave shibboleths to patriotic democracy in all lands. 
He left us love songs that ease the world's heartache, 
little simplicities and particularities and personalities 
of utterance that are universal in their scope and feel- 
ing. "John Anderson, My Jo," "Afton Water," "My 
Love is Like a Red Red Rose," "My Dearie." He has 
sung friendship even as he has sung love, matchlessly, 
to Glencairn, to Simpson, to Lapraik, to James Smith: 

For me, I swear by sun and moon. 
And every star that blinks aboon, 
Ye've cost me twenty pair of shoon 
Just gaun to see you. 
And every other pair that's done, 
Mair ta'en I'm wi you. 

49 



Burns never attacked religion, nor worth of any- 
kind. Indeed he had a passion for honesty. He 
believed in honesty in poetry. That is why, I believe, 
he has never written anything in literary English that 
compares with the things he has done in the Scotch 
dialect. 

Gie me ae spark o' Nature's fire, 

That's a' the learning I desire, 

Then tho' I drudge thro' dub and mire, 
At plough or cart, 

My muse, though hamely in attire, 

May touch the heart. 

His philosophy: It is faith in good works. 

If happiness have not her seat 
And center in the breast, 
We may be wise or rich or great. 
We never can be blest. 

And charity for all, even for the Devil ! What a 
stroke of sublime pantheism is his declaration that the 
light that leads astray is light from heaven. 

The poetry of Burns has become the thought-stuff 
of the world, wherever men care for the primal virtues, 
wherever they strive for liberty. His countrymen have 
carried his gospel abroad, wide as the waters be ; and 
around the world, the doctrine of individual worth has 
made and is making headway ; human rights rather 
than rank rights, or money rights are coming into wider 
and wider supremacy, and, insomuch as Robert Burns 
had such tremendous share in this it demonstrates the 
truth of Shelley's saying that "poets are the unacknow- 
ledged legislators of the world." 



50 



r\N THE Burns Night of 1911, the Club recorded tribute to 
^^ the memory of a late member, Joseph A. Graham, who 
had been one of the zealous, steadfast promoters of the Burns 
Cottage at the World's Fair: 

"He was of that nature to which the gospel of Burns 
appealed strongly. He viewed men with the tolerance bred 
of a newspaper life. He loved dogs. We, of the Burns Club, 
rceall fondly the charming personality of our late associate 
and we voice our tribute to his memory, borrowing the lines: 

"Heav'n rest his saul, whare'er he be! 
Is the wish o' many mae than me; 
He had twa faults, or may be three. 

Yet what remead? 
Ae social, honest man want we 

Tam Samson's dead." 



51 



AFTER the dinner of 1911, Professor J. L. Lowes, of the 
•^*- chair of English at Washington University, took the 
Burns Club to an unusual viewpoint of the poet's genius. He 
led his hearers back to the English poets of the eighteenth 
century. He described and illustrated the repressed, pent-up, 
tamed spirit of that period until its very smoldering presence 
seemed to fill the chamber. And then with sudden transition, 
he caused to burst forth, without bounds, the soulful flame of 
Burns. 

The honor guest of the Club upon this Burns Night was 
David Franklin Houston, chancellor of Washington Univer- 
sity, later Secretary of Agriculture in the Cabinet of President 
Woodrow Wilson. 



52 



BURNS AND ENGLISH POETRY 

By John Livingston Lowes, 

Professor of English, Washington University 

January 28, 1911 

NO ONE but a Scotchman born has any right to 
speak of Burns before a Burns Ckib, and I, alas! 
am not a Scotchman born. It is true that one of my 
remote grandmothers was named Janet Adair, and that 
an ancestor of my own name Hes buried, for some inscrut- 
able reason, in Holyrood Chapel. But another grand- 
mother bore the name of Anne West, and still another 
was christened in unspellable Holland Dutch, so that I 
fear there is a blending of blood which excludes me from 
the magic circle of those who call Burns countryman. 
Moreover, Burns is like Shakespeare, in that everything 
about him has been already said, and most of it said finally. 
To attempt to add a note to the chorus of praise with 
which for a century he has been greeted would be "to 
paint the lily, and add another hue unto the rainbow." My 
only salvation (and that for the time being is yours, too) 
lies in approaching Burns from outside ; and what I wish, 
with your permission, to do very briefly this evening, is to 
consider something of what Burns brought into the great 
current of English poetry. 

Burns appeared at the beginning of a reaction against 
a reaction. The century to whose close he belonged had 
swung far enough away from the traits and qualities 
which had characterized the great age that had preceded 
it. Few periods have been so keenly alive, so virile and 
red-blooded, so brilliantly varied in their interests and 
activities as that of Elizabeth. There was a zest in living 
that expressed itself in a superb spontaneity, a careless 
audacity, an unconsidered lavishness, both in life and in 

This address was delivered extempore, and, as it stands, has been 
dictated from scanty notes. It is printed here, not because the writer deems 
it in form or content worthy of such permanence — for he does not; but 
because the Burns Club has asked that it be done. — J. L. L. 

53 



letters, which it would be hard to parallel elsewhere. There 
was the stir of great movements in the air. The influence 
of the Renaissance, sweeping up throug'h France and 
Spain from Italy — "that great limbec of working brains," 
as old James Howell afterwards called it — had reached 
England. The voyages to the New World and the daring 
exploits of men who (in the phrase which embodies the 
very spirit of the Elizabethan voyagers) "made a wild 
dedication of themselves, To unpath'd waters, undream'd 
shores" — all this had powerfully stimulated men's imag- 
ination. The menace of Spain was making possible such 
patriotism as burns in old Gaunt's dying words : 

This happy breed of men, this little world, 

This precious stone set in the silver sea . . . 

This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, .this England . , . 

This land of such dear souls, this dear, dear land . . . 

England, bound in with the triumphant sea. 

In a word, men were living deeply, broadly, keenly, 
and the literature reflected that depth and breadth and 
vividness. It reflected it in the richness and searching 
veracity with which almost every phase of human passion 
was depicted; it reflected it in the unfettered freedom of 
form that characterized the literature from the briefest 
lyric to a tragedy like Lear; and it was couched in a 
diction which was often like the large utterance of the 
early gods. 

Then gradually the pendulum began to swing the 
other way. This is no place to enter into the reasons for 
the change. The change came, and it is what it carried 
with it that concerns us here. I am not one of those who 
decry the eighteenth century. That much maligned period 
had its own contribution to make, and it made it in its own 
dispassionate and businesslike way. But its needle pointed 
to the other pole, and its ideals were in large degree 
opposed to those of the spacious days that had preceded it. 
And nowhere was this more strikingly true than in its 
poetry. If, then, you will permit me to be concrete, I 
should like to suggest a few things that may help to set 
in clearer light the real significance of Robert Burns. 

54 



In the first place, one fundamental article of the 
eighteenth century poetical code was the repression of 
passion. Here, for example, are a few passages taken 
wholly at random from the poets of the period, which will 
illustrate what I mean : 

Let all be hushed, each softest motion cease, 
Be every loud tumultous thought at peace. 

That happens to be from Congreve's lines. On Miss 
Arabella Hunt Singing. Again, in Parnell: 

When thus she spake — Go rule thy will, 
Bid thy wild passions all be still. 

Doctor Johnson, too, strikes the same note : 

Pour forth thy fervors for a healthful mind, 
Obedient passions, and a will resigned. 

Not otherwise writes Whitehead, in a poem called 
(of all things!) The Enthusiast: 

The tyrant passions all subside, 
Fear, anger, pity, shame and pride 
No more my bosom move. 

I shall add without comment a few more examples: 

At helm I make my reason sit. 

My crew of passions all submit (Green); 

Content me with an humble shade. 

My passions tamed, my wishes laid (Dyer); 

And through the mists of passion and of sense 
To hold his course unfaltering (Akenside); 

the virtuous man 

Who keeps his tempered mind serene and pure. 
And every jarring passion aptly harmonized 

(Thompson). 

These are perfectly typical examples of the attitude 
of the times. And it is, of, course, a sound enough atti- 
tude ethically, too. But that is not the point. The point 

55 



is simply this. Suppose Lear and Hamlet and Othello and 
Macbeth, suppose Oedipus and Tristram and Launcelot 
and Faust had possessed "obedient passions and will 
resigned !" The question answers itself. No ! with all 
its praiseworthy efforts to see things as they are, the 
eighteenth century shut its eyes to one of the most funda- 
mental facts of all — to those deep-rooted and elemental 
impulses whose clash and often tragic struggle purge and 
uplift through pity and fear. Clever and often masterly 
as its craftmanship was ; clear-eyed and shrewd and sane 
as many of its judgments were, the period hermetically 
sealed itself against the great winds of the spirit. 

But that was not all. Not only was the range of 
human interest notably restricted, but the splendid free- 
dom of poetic form that had characterized the earlier days 
was gone as well. Upon that superb creature, the spirit 
of English poetry, there was imposed the strait-jacket of 
what was virtually a single meter ; the thing was cabined, 
cribbed, confined, bound in, by the limits of the decasyll- 
abic couplet. Now one may grant at once that to certain 
purposes no instrument could be more exquisitely adapted 
than the heroic couplet. But, as in so many instances, the 
difficulty lay not in the use, but in the abuse of the 
medium ; and a measure which fits an epigram like a glove 
is not for that reason necessarily adapted to voice the 
poignant outcry of a tortured soul. But, after all, precisely 
one trouble with the eighteenth century was the fact that 
it didn't greatly vex its soul ; and one result of its coolly 
rationalistic attitude toward life, coupled with the influ- 
ence of the amazing craftsmanship of Pope, was a devas- 
tating monotony of heroic couplets, which spread over 
English poetry like a flood, with only the tip of an occas- 
ional Ararat projecting above the waves. I know I am 
painting in too broad lines, in too high lights, but this is 
after dinner, and I am, I think, telling the essential truth. 

But still another count has to be added to the indict- 
ment. For no less fatal than the relentless vogue of the 
couplet was the prevalence of a so-called "poetic diction." 

56 



The age revelled in conventional stock terms for things. 
To call a spade by its proper name was like presenting 
oneself in company in puris natiiralihus. It is all very like 
Bottom and Snout and the lion in the Midsummer Night's 
Dream. "To bring in a lion," says Bottom, ''To bring in 
— God shield us ! — a lion among ladies is a most dreadful 
thing ; for there is not a more fearful wild fov/1 than your 
lion living." "Therefore," says Snout, "another prologue 
must tell that he is not a lion." And so, for the benefit of 
artistic sensibilities, in the poetry we are considering, the 
lions roar as gently as any sucking doves. The 
wind is softened to "the trembling zephyr" or "the frag- 
rant gale." Shakespeare's "Cradle of the rude imperious 
surge" becomes "the sprightly flood," or "swelling tide" ; 
a boot is "the shining leather that encased the limb" ; a 
pipe is "the short tube that fumes beneath the nose." 
Does one make cofifee? Then, "From silver spouts the 
grateful liquors glide. And China's earth receives the 
smoking tide." Does one stab? Why then, one "with 
steel invades the life.'' In a word, the poetry of the eight- 
eenth century was doomed to go in periwig and small 
clothes ; the superb forthrightness and directness and 
poignancy of the virile speech of deep feeling or compell- 
ing passion was to it an unknown tongue. 

And in upon all that formalism and convention and 
repression came Robert Burns — "Neither eighteenth cen- 
tury nor nineteenth century" (as Arthur Symons put it 
a year or so ago) ; "neither local nor temporary, but the 
very flame of man, speaking as a man has only once or 
twice spoken in the w^orld." And now, perhaps, we may 
see more clearly some elements of his significance. 

"The very flame of man" — that puts the essential 
thing, I think, as well, perhaps, as words after all can 
express it. For what one thinks of first in Burns' work 
is its throbbing, pulsing life, which fuses at white heat 
whatever inert stuff comes into his alembic. The eighteenth 
centviry was interested, in its cold methodical way, in 
abstract truth. Burns' passion for reality, for the true 

57 



ig, was like a consuming fire, and Holy Willie's Prayer, 
and the Address to the Deil, and the Address to the Unco 
Giiid in their trenchant hnes strip sham and hypocrisy 
stark naked, and leave them shivering. The eighteenth 
century had its theories, pleasing enough, about the rights 
of man. Burns did what Wordsworth rightly insisted every 
true poet must do — he "carried the thing alive into the 
heart by passion," and "A man's a man for a' that" — and 
I should even say The Jolly Beggars, too, — is worth all 
the volumes of abstract theorizing that preceded it. The 
eighteenth century took little stock in nature. That line 
in The Rape of the Lock — "Sol through white curtains 
shot a timorous ray" — has always seemed to me rather 
engagingly symbolic of the whole period ; it loved to look 
at nature, when it looked at all, through curtained win- 
dows, and the couplet was quite large enough for what it 
saw. But to Burns the world of nature, animate and 
inanimate, and the world of human life were bone of one 
bone and flesh of one flesh. There could scarcely be two 
men more essentially unlike at most points than St. Francis 
of Assissi and Robert Burns, yet at one point there is an 
almost startling kinship between the two. Some of you 
will recall St. Francis's wonderful Canticle of the Sun : 

"Praised be my Lord God with all his creatures; and 
especially our brother the sun, who brings us the day, and 
who brings us the light; fair is he, and shining with a very 
great splendor: Oh Lord, he signifies us to Thee. 

"Praised be my Lord for our sister the moon, and for 
the stars, the which he has set clear and lovely in heaven. 

"Praised be my Lord for our brother the wind, and for 
air and clouds, calms and all weather, by the which thou 
upholdst in life all creatures. 

"Praised be my Lord for our sister water, who is very 
serviceable to us, and humble, and precious, and clean. 

"Praised be my Lord for our brother tire, through whom 
thou givest us light in the darkness; and he is bright, and 
pleasant, and very mighty and stromg." 



58 



It is that same vivid sense of the brotherhood of all things 
that are, that is Burns' authentic note : 

Wee, sleekit, cow'rin, tim'rous beastie, 
O, what a panic's in thy breastie! 
Thou need na start awa sae hasty, 

Wi' bickering brattle! 
I wad be laith to rin an' chase thee, 

Wi' murd'ring prattle! 

Thy wee bit housie, too, in ruin! 
Its silly wa's the win's are strewin! 
An' naething, now, to big a new ane, 

O' foggage green! 
An' bleak December's winds ensuin, 

Baith snell an' keen! 

The eighteenth century was Httle disturbed by love. 
It could "die of a rose in aromatic pain" — but it died in an 
epigram! The passion that surged through the Eliza- 
bethan and Jacobean lyrics and plays had beat itself out ; 
in Pope's hands even the tragic agony of Heloise and Abe- 
lard is softened into a mild regret ; the theme is played on 
muted strings. Nobody sang in those days as when, in 
the great days before, "wild music burthened every 
bough." One doesn't sing satire and epigram and critique. 
But with Burns human passion came again to its own. 
For, strange as it is, it is no less true, that it isn't what 
men think, but what they feel that lasts. What Thales 
and all the Seven Sages thought out "mit Miihe und Not" 
is as obsolete as the implements forged by Tubal Cain, 
while Sapho's handful of mutilated, fragmentary lines that 
have survived are contemporary with Shelley and with 
Poe. And in Burns this same elemental human note 
makes itself heard again. Imagine Dryden or Pope or 
Doctor Johnson, or even Goldsmith or Gray or Cowper 
writing : 

"O, my love's like a red, red rose. 
That's newly sprung in June!" 

And that brings us to another thing. 

59 



New wine won't go into old bottles — and here, 
emphatically, was new wine. What was to happen ? Well, 
that happened which has happened again and again. It 
happened when, with only the measured, balanced cad- 
ences of classical prosody to express it, there came into 
the world that passionate thing — for that certainly is what 
it was — that found its most marvelous expression in the 
close of the .eighth chapter of the letter to the Romans. 
Could that find room in the stately, serene hexameters of 
Virgil, or in the graceful stanzas of the Horatian ode ? It 
couldn't, and it didn't ; it beat its own music out, and we 
have, as the result of it, the poignant, plangent measures 
of the Latin hymns. The new and deeper passion had 
forged for itself a new and marvelous measure, that has 
influenced the poets ever since. Could Beethoven's stormy 
and tragic meaning cramp itself within the conventional 
rondo of Hayden or even Mozart? Play one of these, and 
then listen to the scherzos — the same fundamental form, 
but quam imitatus ab illo! — the scherzos of the great 
symphonies, with their rollicking gayety, grim mystery, 
and tragic portent. And so, when Burns appeared, the 
day of the heroic couplet was done — done because the 
winged, flame-like thing he brought could not be caged 
within it, any more than Lear's ravings, or the sea-music 
of Pericles, or the something rich and strange of the 
Tempest could be put in Shakespeare's earlier blank verse. 

And as he brought freedom of rhythm once more, so 
with him came back again to English poetry a diction, 
fresh and masculine and vigorous. "Paul's words," said 
Luther, "are alive: they have hands and feet; if you cut 
them they bleed." And Burns' words are no less alive, 
and they are besides racy with the tang of the soil. They 
are like the speech that Montaigne loved : 'Tt is a natural, 
simple and unaffected speech that I love," wrote 
Montaigne, "so written as it is spoken, and such upon the 
paper as it is in the mouth, a pithie, sinnowie, full, strong, 
compendious and material speech." And with Tarn 

60 



O' Shunter, far more than with Wordsworth's amiable 
experiments, the reign of the old poetic diction was at 
an end. 

"The very flame of man speaking as a man has only 
spoken once or twice in the world" — that ims Robert 
Burns. And this authentic speech of his proclaimed for 
English poetry the dawn of a new day. 



61 



TO THE BARD OF AULD 
LANG SYNE 

By James Main Dixon, Litt. D., F. R. S. Edin. , 

Director of Oriental Studies and Professor of Literature, 

University of Southern California 

Read at the meeting of the Burns Club of St. Louis, on the 
anniversary of the poet's birth, January 25, 1913 

What tuneful bard of Auld Lang Syne 

Wi' Robbie can compare, 
Who sings the home of me and mine, 

The bonnie Banks of Ayr; 

The daisy with its crimson tips 

That nestles 'mid the dew; 
The fragrant rose with ruddy lips, 

And thorns if love's untrue; 

The laverock springing from the nest 

At the first peep of day, 
To wake the shepherd from his rest 

And singing soar away. 

I stand beside the reapers strong 

Among the bearded bear. 
I hear the mavis' mellow song 

When eventide is near. 

I see auld ruined castles gray 

Nod grimly to the moon, 
And Hornie waiting for his prey 

To fricht wi' eldritch croon; 

And Alloway's auld haunted kirk 

Among the sheeted dead, 
Where witches foot it in the mirk 

By supple Nannie led. 

The auld clay biggin's walls appear; 

And ben the hallan there. 
From a hush'd household group I hear 

The voice of evening prayer. 

Hail to the bard who sings the praise 

Of Scots who fought and bled 
At Stirling Bridge and Loudon Braes 

With Wallace at their head; 

62 



And who at glorious Bannockburn, 
With Bruce sae bauld and slee, 

Made Edward like a coward turn 
And to the borders flee. 

Rab's lines are like the burning gleed, 
They warm us, make us wiser; 

But may we better reck the rede 
Than ever did th' adviser! 

From his wee sleekit mouse I take 
That word with wisdom fraught, 

The best constructed plans we make 
Will often come to naught. 

From him I get that noble rule — 

The man of upright mind 
Who scorns to palter and to snool 

Is king among mankind. 



63 



T IKE unto Isaiah, Judge Moses N. Sale compared Burns 
■^ when the Club observed the 151st anniversary of the birth 
of the poet. He found in Burns the gift of tongues and of 
prophesy for men of every clime and all times. He drew^ 
parallels between the words of the ancient prophet in Israel 
and those of him who "scotched" the Pharisees, the "unco 
guid" of a later generation. He rebuked in scathing terms 
those who question the religious nature of Burns and who 
see in the "Cotter's Saturday Night" and other Burns poems 
of like nature only "recoil from excesses of the flesh.'* The 
straight-from-the-shoulder sentences of Judge Sale found 
quick-answering echo in standing vote of the Club, and in the 
first suggestion to print the volume of Burns Nights in St. 
Louis. 



64 



BURNS, THE PROPHET 

By Moses N. Sale, 
Late Judge of the Circuit Court of St. Louis 

January 25, 1910 

MY APOLOGY is due to the members of the club for 
reading from my manuscript on this occasion. 
I might tell you, and you would doubtless believe me, that 
the duties of office and a self-assumed obligation to a body 
of young men, anxious to improve themselves as lawyers, 
have not given me the time since I was notified by our 
secretary, of the part assigned to me on this occasion. 
These reasons would form a durable foundation for my 
apology, and they certainly bear the appearance of being 
solid. They seem to me to be apparently valid excuses 
for my not being able to deliver to you an extemporaneous 
address, conceived on the spur of the moment and inspired 
by the occasion itself after days of deliberation. These 
reasons, however, are apparent and not real. Stage fright, 
a form of nervousness, known to those learned in medical 
jargon as "amnesic aphasia" — the chief symptom of which 
is the inability on the part of the patient to call to mind 
the exact word he wants, although recognizing it and able 
to pronounce it when found or when suggested, this 
is the real reason for my putting on paper my thoughts 
concerning Scotland's greatest poet, and one of the 
world's great poets. I hope you will detect, concealed in 
that reason, my great respect for the members of the 
Burns Club. 

Before entering, however, on the subject assigned to 
me, there is another matter which has long lain on my 
mind, and which has troubled me no little. I disavow 
sincerely and earnestly any desire to pose as a reformer 
or to act as a censor in matters of social etiquette ; yet it 
strikes me that on occasions of this kind, chaos is sub- 
stituted for cosmos. Like him whose birthday we cele- 
brate this evening, I am ordinarily a sociable animal; I 

65 



enjoy the good things of life that so sparingly fall to my 
lot, but I find it beyond me altogether to be my natural 
self, I find it impossible to be sociable, to enjoy myself and 
to contribute my share to the enjoyment of others when I 
sit down to a table laden with good things to whet and 
satisfy the appetite, knowing all the while that the sword 
of Damocles hangs over my head ready to drop at the 
word of the presiding genius. Foreknowledge of coming 
events on those occasions aggravates every symptom of 
my disease ; and I am, therefore, driven to the necessity of 
putting my words on paper in order to make myself intell- 
igible. If I permit my dirt-self to enjoy the eating and 
drinking, I do so at the expense of my psychic-self. 
I always envied the man, who, knowing he was to be called 
upon after his dinner for a speech, could yet enjoy him- 
self as fully and freely as if nothing direful was impend- 
ing. I confess that on these occasions my bodily and my 
mental self get into a fracas, and I am unable to extricate 
the one from the other until I am on my way home, 
walking in the cool of the night air, when my mental-self 
reasserts its dominion, and I recall to mind the splendid 
speech I had intended to make, but forgot ; and then I see 
all too clearly, what a glorious opportunity I missed of 
talking myself into local fame. This confession, publicly 
made, together with the slight pressure of official work, 
and my profound respect for the Bums Club, are my 
justification for reading my address. 

I want to make the suggestion now to members of the 
Burns Club, that hereafter, at these annual commemora- 
tions, the order of business be so changed as to make it 
possible for the speakers to enjoy the dinner by giving 
them the opportunity of emptying themselves of their 
speeches, so as to make room for the dinner. Speeches 
first, dinner next. 

May I not modestly ask, "What was I or my genera- 
tion that I should get sic exaltation" as to be selected by 
the club for the honor of speaking to you of Robert Burns 
on the 151st anniversary of his birth? I am honored 

66 



beyond my meed. I have frequently spoken in terms of 
profound admiration of the work of Burns and of my deep 
sympathy with his short and wonderful career. I have 
thus spoken in the presence of some of my friends, who 
were so fortunate as to have been born in Scotland or 
descended from Scotch ancestors, and doubtless my talk- 
ing in such presence is responsible for my plight tonight. 

I cannot now recall when I first began to read Burns. 
Except in a general way I cannot now say what first 
attracted or drew me towards him. I do know what con- 
tinues to draw me in that direction and what will hold me 
fast to him as a friend so long as life continues. I am not 
quite sure, but I am inclined to believe that his Ode to 
Poverty was the first of his minor poems which I read or 
heard read, and I was so charmed with its truth and 
earnestness that I began to read and study the poet. The 
Doric dialect of South Scotland, in which Burns wrote, 
only increased the charm of his writing for me. The 
more of him I read the more I wanted to read ; the 
stronger grew my admiration as I read, and my love for 
him as an older brother, who sufifered much, who endured 
poverty and hardship, and yet during his all too brief life 
set beacon lights along the path of human life, to warn his 
fellow men of the pit-falls into which he himself had so 
frequently fallen. 

My slight knowledge of the German language made 
it easier for me to understand the Scotch dialect. I always 
found an exquisite pleasure in tracing the wandering of 
words from people to people, from language to language. 
History furnishes no stronger proof than language that 
the time was when man to man the world o'er were 
brothers. The poet says : "Go fetch to me a pint of wine, 
and fill it in a silver tassie." "Tassie" is the German 
"tasse," English "cup." In the song of Burns where the 
young lassie considers what she could best do with her 
auld man, the young wife complains that "he hosts and he 
hirples." "Hosts" is the German "Husten," to cough. You 
remember "That sark she coft for her wee Nannie." 

67 



"Coft" is the German "'kaufen," to buy. I rede ye — rede, 
the German ''rede" — English, speech or discourse. "May 
30U better reck the rede than ever did the adviser." "Reck" 
is the German "rechen," which means to count or cal- 
culate. "Skaith," Scotch — for injury, is the German 
word "schade," ("The Deil he could no skaith thee") 
as the Scotch "blate" is the German "bloede" ; — "sicker" — 
secure ; — "unsicker" — insecure — German sicher. "Geek" 
— {"y^ S^^^ ^^ ^'^^ because I'm poor") — German gucken. 
The Cotter ''wales" a portion of the big Ha' Bible, with 
judicious care — German Wahlen — choose. 

These are simply illustrations of what to me was an 
additional charm in the language of Burns. Burns has 
sung himself into the hearts of men and women the world 
over, and he will remain there enshrined until time is no 
more. Every great poet is a prophet. Burns was such. 

"He smote the earth with the rod of his mouth, and 
with the breath of his lips did he slay the wicked." He 
had a message to deliver. He expressed it throughout his 
poems in manifold ways. 

In the ode to General Washington's birthday he 
expresses it thus : 

"But come ye Sons of Liberty, 
Columbia's offspring, brave as free, 
In danger's hour still fiaming in the van, 
Ye know, and dare maintain the Royalty of Man." 

and again : 

"Is there for honest poverty 
That hangs his head an' a' that 
The coward slave — we pass him by, 
We dare be poor for a' that! 
For a' that, an' a' that. 
Our toils obscure an' a' that, 
The rank is but the guinea's stamp, 
The man's the gowd for a' that." 

The pith of sense and pride of worth, the genuine in 
man as against cant and hypocrisy, the false in man are 
the chief notes of his song. In a broad sense, he sang and 

68 



taught the worth of man ; that life is worth the living, if 
lived worthily. 

As his great countryman expresses it : 

"To the ill-starred Burns was given the power of making 
man's life more venerable, but that of wisely guiding his own 
life was not given." 

You mav sing loud and you may sing long, but unless 
there is sweetness and truth — I should say the sweet- 
ness of truth — in the voice that sings, the louder you sing, 
the smaller will your audience become until it dwindles to 
the singer alone. 

That Burns sang the truth sweetly, is not only demon- 
stratable from his own writings, but is likewise proven by 
his constantly growing audience. 

Commencing, as he did, with a few peasant listeners 
in his Ayrshire home, he had before his death an audience 
wide as the confines of the English language, which since 
his death has swollen into a loving and reverent audience, 
embracing the civilized world wherever an articulate 
tongue is spoken. His poems have been translated into 
German, French, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Danish, Hun- 
garian, Swiss and even into Latin verse — aye, even into 
Russian ; and who knows, but that the leaven of his cry 
for the royalty, the worth of man — as man, is today work- 
ing in that semi-civilized country, teaching the Russian 
peasant that it is man's inhumanity to man makes count- 
less thousands mourn, and that the pith of sense and pride 
of worth are higher rank than a belted knight. 

In 1786 the first edition of his poems was published, 
known as "The Kilmarnock Edition." Every year since 
that memorable year, 1786, almost without exception, 
somewhere among the sons of men whom Burns so loved, 
some volume by Burns or concerning him has been pub- 
lished, and in some of those years many volumes were 
published, until now the bibliography of Burns, things 
written by and of him, in the various quarters of the globe, 
including only single copies of each edition of such publi- 
cations, would constitute a library of more than one thous- 
and volumes. 

69 



What does all this mean? It can have only one sig- 
nificance, and that is, that Burns had a world-wide mes- 
sage to deliver, which men were eager to hear, and for 
which the human soul hungered ; that his message was 
true and came from the heart of one man to the hearts of 
his fellow-men, not only to his fellow-Scot, but to his 
fellow-man the world over. 

If it could ever be said truthfully of any poet in any 
language, it must be said of Burns that he, indeed, "found 
tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in 
stones, and good in everything." Notwithstanding the 
truth of this assertion it may not be unbecoming in me to 
say, since the local press has been discussing a censorship 
of the stage, that our own beloved poet would have been 
put in the index librorumi prohibitorum or at least in the 
index expurgatorius long, long ago, if orthodoxy had its 
way ; and this is quite evident from a pamphlet published 
in 1811 entitled, "Burnsiana, addressed to real Qiristians 
of every denomination," by the Rev. William Peebles, and 
another pamphlet published in 1869, entitled "Should 
Christians commemorate the birthday of Robert Burns," 
by the Rev. Fergus Ferguson. I have never read, nor 
have I ever seen a copy of either of these oblivion-seeking 
publications ; and the publications, except to the curious 
students of Burns, have dropped where they belong, into 
"the insatiate maw of oblivion" ; but if there had been a 
censorship of the press in Burns' day, Burns would have 
been barred. The very names of Rev. Fergus Ferguson 
and the Rev. William Peebles sound strange to our ears, 
and except for the fact that each of these reverend gentle- 
men, during a long and useful life, wrote a monograph 
upon a subject connected with the name of Robert Burns, 
they would now be buried so deep in the bottomless pit of 
oblivion that the trumpet of the Angel Gabriel would not 
disturb their rest. 

In 1859 a chronicle of the hundredth birthday of 
Burns was published at Edinburgh, containing an account 
of more than eight hundred meetings held in various parts 

70 



of the English-speaking world, together with the most 
important speeches delivered at such meetings. Here one 
hundred years after the birth of Bums was an answer to 
the Rev. Fergus Ferguson, an answer unanimously in the 
affirmative, that Christians — genuine Christians — not nec- 
essarily those who wear the garb ol sanctity, should com- 
memorate the birthday of Robert Burns ; and in behalf of 
at least a portion of the non-Christian population of the 
universe, I affirm that the Jews should likewise commem- 
orate the birthday of Robert Burns ; Robert Burns was a 
prophet in Israel, and like a veritable prophet, he speaks to 
the genuine man of every clime and all times, to all those 
who answer in the affirmative, the questions, "Have we 
not all one Father?" "Hath not one God created us all?" 
Cunning and hypocrisy had invaded the Church of Scot- 
land in Burns' day, as they had churches in other days, 
and as thev will continue to invade the church in yet other 
days. Burns had little patience with public censors — 
those who had "naught to do but mark and tell their 
neighbors' faults and follies." Every age is afflicted with 
the pestiferous censor — the man who wants to cut and 
determine for his supposed weaker brothers, the pattern 
of a moral life; unfortunately these pattern makers do 
little else than make patterns. Now, a pattern is in and 
of itself worthless, unless you fashion something useful by 
means of it. The iron-worker uses his mold, but you 
can't use the mold or pattern for building a structure and 
if the iron-worker did no more than make patterns, he 
would live a very useless life. He must do something with 
his pattern, he must make articles of utility or of beauty, 
and if he did nothing more than stand idly by and criticise 
the work of others he is fulfilling not the purpose of the 
creator — who only criticised his own work, and that after 
it was completed and done — but he is following the 
example of old Hornie, Satan, Nick or Clootie, whatever 
his title may be — creating nothing, but always seeking "to 
scaud poor wretches." 

Burns scotched the Pharisees, the rigidly righteous 
of his day — the attendants at the solemn meetings — those, 

71 



who "for a pretence make long prayers," as did Isaiah his 
hypocritical contemporaries ; as Jesus of Nazareth flayed 
the same everlasting species in his day. "The blind guides 
which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel ;" "the hypo- 
crites who pay their tithe of mint and anise and cummin, 
and omit the weightier matters of the law ;" "those who do 
all their work for to be seen of men," "those who sit in the 
chief seats of the synagogues," who occupy the front 
pews of the churches — those, in short, who have "devo- 
tions' every grace, except the heart" — these, all these and 
their name is legion, were scourged by Burns with true 
prophetic fire — and these self-same Scribes and Pharisees 
are those who speak and write of Burns' irreligiousness. 
A brother prophet in Israel had sung : 

"The ox knoweth its owner, and the ass his master's crib; but 
Israel doth not know; my people doth not consider." 

"Bring no more vain oblations," sang Isaiah. "Incense is an 
abomination unto me. The new moons and sabbaths, the calling 
of assemblies (church meetings) I cannot endnire. It is iniquity, 
even the solemn meeting. Your ne%v m)oon and your appointed 
feasts my soul liateth. They are a trouble unto me; I am weary 
to bear them. And when you spread forth your hands I zvill hide 
mine eyes from you; yea, zvhen you make many prayers I zvill not 
hear. Your Ihnds are full of blood, zvash ye! Make yourselves 
clean; Put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; 
Cease to do evil; Learn to do well; Seek judgment, relieve the 
oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the zvidozu. The princes 
are rebellious and companions of thieves. Everyone loves gifts 
and follozveth after rewards. (Just as the boodlers of our day.) 
They judge not the fatherless, neither doth the cause of the widow 
come unto them." 

Thus sang the old Hebrew prophet. It is easily 
imaginable that if we had all that was written by some 
of the orthodox ministers, (some of the "unco guid") of 
and concerning Isaiah, there would be found among the 
lot one with the title page, "Should Israelites commem- 
orate the birth-day of Isaiah?" 

Burns might have written the foregoing quotation 
from Isaiah. He did write so many like it that the preach- 
ers in his day thought doubtless — as the priests did of 

72 



Isaiah, that Burns was irreligious. Many so-called critics 
of Burns attribute his attacks on the church to motives of 
personal rancor ; but how little they understand the poet ! 
The true poet sees the very soul of things. The rotten- 
ness was in the church, and it was this corruption, this 
humbug and hypocrisy within the church that stirred the 
ire of Burns as it stirred the soul of the ancient prophet 
under similar circumstances in the religion of Israel. 

Burns had no patience with the new moon, the 
sabbath, the appointed feasts, the solemn meetings, and 
the many prayers uttered from the lips. They were to him 
as they were to Isaiah an abomination, because, in the 
language of Burns, these things were done : 

"In all the pomp of method and of art, 
When men display to congregations wide, 
Devotion's every grace, except the heart. 

He had no patience with such lip service, but that he 
was devoutly truly religious, his poems abundantly prove. 
No one can read 'The Cotter's Saturday Night," which 
contains that beautiful description of religious life in the 
home of the poor peasant — his own father's home — with- 
out feeling that Burns was essentially and truly religious. 

In his epistle to the Rev. John McMath, he says : 

"I gae mad at their grimaces. 
Their sigh'n, cantin' grace-proud faces, 
Their three-mile prayers and half-mile graces." 

And in this same epistle he apostrophizes thus : 

"All Hail, Religion, Maid Divine, 
Pardon a muse so mean as mine, 
Who in her rough, imperfect line, 
Thus dares to name thee; 
To stigmatize false friends of thine, 
Can ne'er defame thee." 

It seems to me quite obvious that Burns, like the 
earlier prophets, was fighting the devil and his imps, even 
though such imps were dressed in cloth and wore the 
livery of heaven. It seems to me that he was only proving 

73 



how truly religious he was when fighting and opposing, 
tooth and nail, as he always did, sham and cant, and those, 
as he puts it, 

"Who take Religion in their mouth, but never have it else- 
where." 

This seems so plain to me that it is hard for me, not 
wearing orthodoxy's hood, to understand how anyone 
could ever have questioned Burns' religious nature. If 
Burns had never known and felt the purity and holiness of 
religion, if he had never known religion in its reality, he 
could never have satirized its bastard offspring as he did 
in "The Holy Tulyie," "Holy Willie's Prayer," "The Holy 
Fair," and the address to the "Unco Guid." If his own 
religious feeling was not genuine, whence came his burn- 
ing indignation at the "false sighin', cantin', grace-proud 
faces, three-mile prayers and half-mile graces." 

Burns did not believe in the orthodox Hell, nor in the 
doctrine of eternal damnation as taught by the church ; 

"The fear o' Hell's a hangman's whip, 
To haud the wretch in order, 
But where ye feel your Honor grip, 
Let that ay be your border." 

I conclude by calling your attention to a scurvy screed 
written by Elbert Hubbard, a king among fakirs, who 
makes books for a living. The screed is one of his little 
journeys, entitled "Robert Burns." It should be entitled 
"Elbert Hubbard," for, it is evidently evolved from his 
inner consciousness, is not based on the life and work of 
Burns, and is so palpably an effort on the part of Hubbard 
to drag the gifted Burns down to his own level that the 
pamphlet is positively disgusting. It is so flattering to a 
small soul to find that Burns went a kennin wrang, but 
the poor fellow whose morals are so frayed and tattered, 
and whose vision is so blurred and dimmed as to be able 
to see in the "Cotter's Saturday Night" only a tip to 
t'other side, that is, the side of excess and vice, is, indeed, 
to be pitied. This poem, Hubbard says, was written after 

74 



a debauch, just as after a debauch a man might sign a 
pledge and swear off, and that this is true of all of Burns' 
religious poems. This great critic at East Aurora says 
that all of Burns' religious poems were simply a recoil 
from excesses of the flesh ; and thus hath another self- 
appointed commentator on Burns damned himself out of 
his own mouth. 

Burns has been criticised, his life and his life's work 
discussed by a number of the British essayists, including 
Lord Jeffrey, Christopher North, Thomas Carlyle and 
Robert Louis Stevenson ; his work as a poet has been 
discussed by professors of universities, bearing all kinds 
of degrees, and it remains for this wise man at East 
Aurora, in the State of New York, to discover the real 
origin of Burns' greatness as a poet. 

Christopher North, in his "Recreations," said of 
Burns : 

"When he sings, it is like listening to a linnet in the 
broom, a blackbird in the brake, a laverock in the sky; they 
sing in the fullness of their joy, as nature teaches them; and 
so did he; and the man, woman or child, who is delighted not 
with such singing, be their virtues what they may, must never 
hope to be in Heaven." 

And so I may well say of the man who in all serious- 
ness writes and publishes in this day and generation that 
the "Cotter's Saturday Night" is the result of a debauch, 
he can never hope to escape Hell — he is already there. 



75 



OCOTTISH Day at the World's Fair was celebrated August 
'^ 15, 1904, the anniversary of the birth of Sir Walter 
Scott. A company of Highlanders escorted other Scottish 
organizations of St. Louis through the grounds to the Burns 
Cottage where President David R. Francis extended a wel- 
come in behalf of the Exposition management. W. R. Smith, 
curator of the Botanical Gardens at Washington, a lover of 
Burns, of international fame, responded. The Scottish flag 
was raised. Auld Lang Syne was sung. In the Hall of 
Congresses, the celebration was continued, with Joseph A. 
Graham presiding. A poem on Robert Burns, by Willis 
Leonard McClanahan, was read by Maye McCamish Hedrick. 
Ingersoll's tribute to "The Place Where Burns was Born" 
was read. Frederick W. Lehmann, a member of the Exposi- 
tion board and chairman of the committee on International 
Congresses, later solicitor general of the United States, 
delivered the address. 



76 



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D 




BURNS OF THE 
"AULD CLAY BIGGIN" 

By Frederick W. Lehmann 

Scottish Day. August IS, 1904 

AMONG the many structures which have been reared 
•^ ^ upon these grounds to illustrate the achievements, 
during a hundred years, of a free people in a free land, 
none has more rightful place than that which so faithfully 
represents the "auld clay biggin" in which Robert Burns 
was born. Called untimely from this life ere yet the lan- 
guage in which he wrote was heard here, though he him- 
self had never set foot beyond the borders of his own 
country, the rich fruitage ot his genius is none the less 
a part of the heritage of our people. Throughout the 
■poetry of Burns breathes the spirit of our institutions, the 
Declaration of Independence, the Proclamation of Eman- 
cipation, and here we have endeavored to realize, as nearly 
as human effort may, the great truth that. 

"The rank is but the guinea's stamp 
The man's the gowd for a' that." 

The artificial verse of modern pessimism has given us 
a description of the "man with the hoe," which Burns 
would not have accepted as a portrait. When he wrote 
his "Cotter's Saturday Night," he drew his inspiration 
not from a foreign canvas, but from his own experience. 
The cotter he describes was his own father, and of the 
children who knelt at the ingleside to join in the worship 
of God, Robert was one. The cotter of Burns' inspiring 
and uplifting poem toiled as hard as ever did Markham's 
man with the hoe, but he was not a dull soulless clod ; the 
light of intelligence was in his eye and the fervor of 
ambition was in his breast. He had been little at school, 
but he was an educated man. His books were few, but 
he read and re-read them until he made their learning and 

77 



wisdom his own. He had strong convictions concerning 
his position in the order of the universe, and his sense of 
nearness to God prevented his abasement in the sight of 
his fehowmen. As his life darkened to its close, the hope 
that he had for himself he retained for his children, and 
to the utmost of his ability he strove to fit them for what- 
ever place they might be called to by duty or opportunity. 

At five years of age Robert was sent to school at 
Alloway Mill, and later the father joined with four of his 
neighbors to hire a teacher for their children. These early 
years were well employed. Every moment that could be 
spared from work was spent in study. He read, not only 
his school books, but Shakespeare, the Spectator, Pope, 
Ramsay, and above all, a collection of old Scottish songs. 
"I pored over them," said he, "driving my cart, or walking 
to labor, song by song, verse by verse, carefully noting 
the true, tender or sublime, from afifectation and fustian. 
I am convinced I owe to this practice much of my critic 
craft, such as it is." His mother was learned in the 
legends and ballads of her country, and she brightened the 
evenings of her humble home by recounting them to her 
children. 

There was little variety in this life. It was strenuous 
in its labor and its study, and simple in its recreations. Its 
burdens were hard to be borne. This showed itself in the 
early stoop of the poet's shoulders, in his frequent sick- 
ness and moods of melancholy. But it was not always 
dark. He found a charm in the books he pored over so 
greedily, and a profound pleasure in the companionships 
which the work and the play of the countryside brought 
him. 

Much has been written concerning his habits during 
the years of his early manhood, but the testimony of those 
who had the best opportunities for observation is that he 
was not a dissipated man. Indeed, his time must in the 
main have been well spent. His letters and his conversa- 
tion showed him to be a man of culture, as surely as his 
poems showed him to be a man of genius. At the age of 

78 



twenty-seven, when the mode of his Hfe had changed but 
Httle, and certainly not for the better, he went from his 
farm hfe in Ayrshire to spend a winter in Edinburgh with 
the highest fashion of that city, and he towered Hke Saul 
among his brethren in a company made up of men like 
Dugald Stewart and Hugh Blair. He was the center 
of attraction at every hospitable board, not as a spectacle 
of nine days' wonder, but as a companion of inspiring 
presence, not alone to set the table in a roar, but as a man 
learned among scholars and wise among sages. Into the 
gay assemblies of the city where the Duchess of Gordon 
held sway, he came as a gentleman, and the Duchess her- 
self had to acknowledge that there was no resisting the 
charm and fascination of his manner. And yet what 
acquirements and accomplishments he had, he got from 
his farm life, and from that he got all the inspiration of 
his muse. In no spirit of mock humility did he tell the 
gentlemen of the Caledonia Hunt that the muse of his 
country found him at the plough tail. There she found 
him, and hardly ever seems she to have sought him else- 
where. It is wonderful how little impress his winter in 
Edinburgh made upon his verse. It may have led him 
to look a little more to smoothness and polish, but he got 
from it no inspiration. 

The poet, we were told long ago, is born and not 
made. We look in vain into the birth and circumstances 
of the world's greatest children for an explanation of 
their genius. The unlettered Homer was the great bard 
of Greece. From among the humblest dwellers on the 
Avon came the master spirit of our drama, who made 
the passions of princes and the ambitions of kings the 
sport of his genius. And from a clay cot near the banks 
of the Doon the world has gotten its sweetest heritage 
of song. 

Before Burns was fifteen years old, his powers dis- 
played themselves. In the labors of the harvest his part- 
ner was a beautiful girl a year younger than himself, 
and she instilled in him, he tells us, "that delicious passion, 

79 



which in spite of acid disappointment, gin-horse prudence, 
and book-worm philosophy, I hold to be the first of human 
joys. . . . Among her love-inspiring qualities she 
sang sweetly; and it was her favorite reel to which I 
attempted giving an embodied vehicle in rhyme. . . - 
Thus with me began love and poetry." 

To the gude-wife of Wauchope House he wrote in 
after years, 

"When first among the yellow corn 
A man I reckoned was, 
An' wi' the lave ilk merry morn 
Could rank my rig and lass, 



E'en then a wish, I mind its power, 
O wish that to my latest hour 
Shall strongly heave my breast, 
That I for puir auld Scotland's sake 
Some useful plan or buik might make, 
Or sing a sang at least." 



He wrote for years, but without publishing, and such 
currency as his poems had they got through the circulation 
of manuscript copies from hand to hand. His reputation 
grew throughout the countryside. While most of his 
verses were in praise of his fair friends, some of them 
were bitter lampoons and biting satires upon those he con- 
ceived to be his enemies, and so, while he was loved by 
some, he was feared and consequently hated by others. 
In the religious controversies between the Old Light and 
the New, he took a free part, and there was more than one 
to harbor resentment for his Holy Fair and Holy Willie's 
Prayer, and bide his time to indulge it. 

Nor had they long to wait. Burns was soon involved 
in difficulties from which he saw no escape save in flight. 
He determined to quit Scotland and to try his fortune in 
the West Indies. To acquire the means of doing this, and 
to leave some remembrance of himself in his native land, 
he ventured upon a publication of his poems. 

In June of 1786, he attended, as he believed, for the 
80 



last time, the meeting of the Masonic Lodge at Tarbolton, 
and taking his farewell of them he concluded. 

"A last request permit me here, 
When yearly ye assemble a' 
One round, I ask it with a tear, 
To him, the bard, that's far awa." 

Never was parting prayer more richly answered. The 
children and the children's children of those who met 
with him at Tarbolton have been gathered to their fathers, 
and still throughout all Scotland and in far distant places, 
wherever Scotia's sons and daughters have wandered, men 
and women yearly gather to pay the richest meed that 
genius can win,— the tribute of their affections to his 
memory. 

• Old Fletcher of Saltoun said that "if a man were 
permitted to make all the ballads, he need not care who 
should make the laws of a nation." Burns wrote the 
songs, not only of Scotland, but of every English speaking 
nation, of countries yet unpeopled when he wrote. 

The Kilmarnock edition was published in 1786, when 
he was twenty-seven years old. The popularity of the 
book was great and instant, and yet he realized from it the 
meagre sum of twenty pounds, not much more than 
enough to pay his expected passage to Jamaica, and less 
than one-fifth of what would be paid for a single copy of it 
at the present time. It is not to be wondered at, that with 
such reward for such work, he was frequently embar- 
rassed and often in despondent mood. He had an aversion 
to debt amounting to horror, and all his life he was fight- 
ing against it. People blamed his want of thrift and his 
habits of life; it might have served better to extend now 
and again a helping hand. 

The reception with which the little volume met deter- 
mined him to stay at home, and to publish a second edition 
of the book. The printer was willing to risk the expense 
of the printing, but he insisted on being guaranteed the 
cost of the paper; and for this the meagre profits of the 
first edition were altogether insufficient. 

81 



But now his fame was not confined to Ayrshire, and 
his ambitious hopes led him to the larger field of the 
capital. The friends he made there came to his assistance, 
and the subscriptions, led by the members of the Caledon- 
ian Hunt, gave assurance of success in advance. Five 
hundred pounds were the rewards of this venture, not 
secured, however, without great delay and difficulty, his 
money being doled out to him from time to time, months 
elapsing before he was able to get a final settlement with 
his publisher. Two hundred pounds he gave to his 
brother, who had undertaken the care of their mother, and 
the remainder he invested in the lease of a farm at Ellis- 
land, the choice of the place being determined rather by 
the fancy of the poet than by the judgment of the farmer. 

His improved circumstances on his return from Edin- 
burgh overcame the objections which the parents of Jean 
Armour had made to him, and his marriage with her, 
irregularly contracted long before, was now publicly 
acknowledged and approved by the kirk. 

But the farm was a failure, and the earnings of his 
literary labors were soon lost upon it, and, much against 
his will, he accepted a place in the excise at fifty pounds 
per year. 

What he thought of this work we can guess from 
what he said : 

"Searching auld wives barrels 
Och on the day! 

That clarty barm should stain my laurels; 
But — what'll ye say? 

These movin' things ca'd wives and weans, 
Wad move the very heart o' stanes." 

But the best sentiment he expressed on the subject 
was to the mother of Glencairn, 'T would much rather 
have it said that my profession borrowed credit from me, 
than that I borrowed credit from my profession." 

He left Ellisland, where he had tried in vain to com- 
bine the business of farmer and exciseman, and came to 
Dumfries. Of his life in this city there has been much 

82 



criticism. He undoubtedly partook sometimes too deeply 
of the pleasures of the social bowl, but in this he but 
shared the habits of his time. His companionship was 
sought by all the free spirits that gathered in the town, for 
there was none like "rantin', rovin' Robin" to make a night 
of mirth and merriment. But the reports of his conduct 
were greatly exaggerated, not only by his enemies, but by 
himself. In his periods of melancholy he was much given 
to self censure. No man ever acknowledged his faults 
more freely or more publicly, and if he had said less of 
his failings, less would have been thought of them. And 
much of the reproach against him was due to his political 
views and the freedom with which he expressed them. 
His heart responded to the rising spirit of independence in 
France, and it was not his nature to stifle his convictions. 
To be a revolutionist was to lose favor in the social realm, 
and Burns was passed unnoticed, because of his principles, 
by many who had small occasion to scorn him because of 
his habits. 

His dependence upon his salary as exciseman irritated 
him and deepened his despondency. He longed for a 
competency that he might be independent; but from the 
beginning to the end fortune mocked his every thrifty 
endeavor. 

His nature was too sensitive to be indifferent to the 
treatment he was receiving. A friend met him one day 
walking alone on the shady side of the street, while the 
opposite walk was gay with successive groups of gentle- 
men and ladies, not one of whom seemed willing to recog- 
nize the poet. The friend proposed to him to cross, but he 
answered, "Nay, nay, my young friend, that's all over 
now," and then quoted a verse from an old ballad. 

"His bonnet stood ance fu' fair on his brow, 
His auld ane looked better than mony ane's new, 
But now he let's 't wear ony way it will hing, 
And casts himself dowie upon the corn bing." 

And yet it was during his Dumfries residence that 
Burns wrote most of his songs. He had been gathering 

83 



old ballads, altering and adding to them for Johnson's 
Museum, besides contributing some of his own, when 
George Thomson entered upon his work of compiling 
Scottish melodies and having songs written for them by 
the best writers of the day. He applied to Burns for the 
help of his genius. Burns answered at once, promising 
his assistance, and redeemed his promise by contributing 
some sixty songs, among them the finest efforts of his 
lyric muse. And, poor as he was, he made it a labor of 
love. "As to remuneration," he wrote to Thomson, "you 
may think my songs above price or below price ; but they 
shall be absolutely one or the other. In the honest 
enthusiasm with which I embark in your undertaking, to 
talk of money, wages, fee, hire, etc., would be downright 
prostitution of soul." 

The man who could write songs like "Highland 
Mary," "Bannockburn," and "A Man's a Man for a' That," 
and make them, even when broken with disease and 
oppressed with poverty, a free gift to his country, is 
entitled to a charity in judgment broad enough to cover 
more sins than could ever be laid to Burns' charge. 

Not until a few days before his death, when he knew 
that his end was near, and an importunate creditor was 
threatening him with a process that would cast him in 
jail, did he alter his purpose. He then wrote to Thomson 
for five pounds, for which he says. "I promise and engage 
to furnish you with five pounds' worth of the neatest song 
genius you have seen." With this letter he enclosed the 
lines of "Fairest Maid on Devon Banks." Thomson sent 
the money, the creditor was paid, and within a week Burns 
was dead. 

"We pity the plumage, and forget the dying bird," 
cried Shelley, as the brilliant Sheridan lay deserted upon 
his deathbed. And so it was with Burns. There was a 
splendid funeral. All Dumfries marched in procession to 
his grave, and a great mausoleum was raised above it. 
And happily better than this, though late it came, his 
family received the substantial recognition of his labors 
that was denied to him. 

84 



When he passed away in the prime of his early man- 
hood, his country awoke to the fact that he was the great- 
est of all her children. No man before, and no man since, 
has done so much to honor her name. 

He gave to Scottish literature what until then it 
wanted, a national quality and character. Men of letters 
there were before. Hume and Robertson had written 
their histories, but for aught that appeared in them, they 
might have come from south of the Tweed. Stewart and 
Reid belong to schools rather than to a nation. Ramsay 
and Ferguson were not strong enough to make an impres- 
sion beyond their own time. Before Burns, the Scottish 
tongue had not attained to the dignity of literary recogni- 
tion. He chose it deliberately as the medium of his song, 
and it mastered him as much as he mastered it. Little of 
what he has written in pure English rises above the level 
of mediocrity, and it would not be possible to anglicize his 
Scottish verse without distinct impairment of its poetic 
quality. 

The theme of his verse, like its garb, was Scotch. 
It was his country and her people, the country as he saw 
it, the people as he knew them. The scenes he describes 
are those with which he was familiar, the men and women 
his every day acquaintances. He never paraphrased books 
and he never copied pictures. And beyond the confines 
of his country he had never traveled. Was he not, then, 
narrow and provincial ? In a sense he was, as all genuine 
men and women are. Just because he knew Scotland so 
well and loved her so intensely, was he a poet of the world 
and of humanity. Love of home is a universal quality. 
Cosmopolitan people are degenerate. They have lost more 
in depth than they have gained in breadth. The man who 
scorns his own people is scorned of all others. The ardent 
patriot who defends his country in every emergency, and 
not the captious citizen ever ready to confess her faults, 
is the type of true manhood, understood and appreciated 
the world over. 

In the poetry of Burns there is no suggestion of the 
pent atmosphere of the study infected with the smoke of 

85 



the midnight candle, but it is all fresh with the caller air 

as it sweeps over heath and moor. His rhymes came to 

him as he walked the fields and by the streams, and they 

are the harmonies of nature set to song. 

There is a quick movement in all his composition. He 

never lingers in description. A line will serve, or, at the 

most, as in his description of the brook in Hallowe'en, a 

verse. 

''Whyles o'er a linn the burnie plays 
As thro' the glen it wimpelt, 
Whyles round a rocky scaur it strays 
Whyles in a wiel it dimpelt; 
Whyles glittered to the nightly rays, 
Wi' bickerin' dancin' dazzle, 
Whyles clookit underneath the braes 
Below the spreading hazel." 

In his song of "Westlin Winds" he brings the birds of 
Scotland before us, each in a line. 

"The partridge loves the fruitful fells, 
The plover loves the mountains. 
The woodcock haunts the lonely dells, 
The soaring hern the fountains; 
Through lofty groves the cushat roves. 
The path of man to shun it; 
The hazel bush o'erhangs the thrush, 
The spreading thorn the linnet." 

The essential qualities of Burns' poems are their truth 
and humanity. His scenic descriptions are but the fram- 
ing of some human incident, and he uses bird and beast 
and flowers always to point some moral or adorn some 
tale of interest to man. He wrote as he felt, and so he 
wrote sometimes sadly and sometimes bitterly ; sadly, for 
he was often seized with melancholy, and bitterly, because 
he felt often that he was harshly used. But, fortunately 
for us and for him, his muse sought him most in his 
brighter moods, and 

"We see amid the fields of Ayr 
A ploughman who in foul or fair, 
Sings at his task, 
So clear we know not if it is 
The laverock's song we hear or his, 
Nor care to ask." 

86 



In the meanest creature and the humblest incident 
that enters into his Hfe, this ploughman finds a poem, — 
in the daisy that he upturns, the field mouse, a wounded 
hare, his aged ewe, his dog, his auld mare, the haggis, and 
even in the toothache. And a louse upon a lady's bonnet 
furnishes the occasion of profound moralizing. 

"O wad some power the giftie gie us, 
To see ourselves as ithers see us, 
It wad fra mony a blunder free us, 
And foolish notion." 



In all literature there is no more beautiful picture of 
humble life than he gives us in the "Cotter's Saturday 
Night." It has invested the cottage with a charm of 
interest beyond the romance of the castle. It has lightened 
the task of many a weary toiler and kept hope in the heart 
of the heavy laden, and above all, it has taught that 

"To make a happy fireside clime 
For weans and wife. 
That's the true pathos and sublime 
Of human life." 



Had Burns lived longer, or had his circumstances in 
life been dififerent, he might have given us some great epic 
or dramatic work. He contemplated one but it was never 
begun. That a great lyric drama was within the reach of 
his powers, his cantata of "The Jolly Beggars" abundantly 
proves. But "Tani O'Shanter" was his most ambitious 
production, and this, for picturesque description, for rapid 
transitions, and for a wonderful blending of mirth and 
morality, is not to be surpassed. 

The austere critic thinks that Burns deals too lightly 
with Tarn's foibles, and so he thinks of Shakespeare in his 
dealing with Falstaff. But these great natures were kindly 
both, and could see the soul of goodness in things evil, 
and their teaching loses nothing of its force because of its 
gentleness. 

87 



Burns could not even rail at the devil without speak- 
ing at least one word of kindly admonition. 

"Fare you weel, auld nickie ben! 
O wad ye tak a thought an' men! 
Ye aiblins might, I dinna ken, 

Still hae a stake 
I'm wae to think upo' yon den, 

Even for your sake." 

The songs of Burns will always be the chief delight of 
his readers, for they run the whole gamut of human 
passion and sentiment. 

He sings of woman, and of every woman that ever 
touched his heart or caught his fancy, and then, lest some 
one might feel slighted, he sang to all the sex in his 
"Green grow the rashes O !" Criticism of these songs is 
impossible. They must be read, or, better, they must be 
sung by some loved voice, and then the heart will feel 
their power. To no mere trick of verse do they owe their 
charm. It is the genuineness of their sentiment, the reality 
of their passion, which holds us in thrall. It has been 
noted that in "Highland Mary" there is not a single per- 
fect rhyme, and this is true, but who cares for that, it is 
none the less the sweetest song ever written by man to 
commemorate a pure and a lost love. 

And where is there such a song of that love which 
never grows old as "John Anderson, My Jo ?" 

In other fields of lyric verse, he is also the master. 
What drinking song better than "Willie brewed a peck of 
maut;" what battle hymn more inspiring than "Bannock- 
burn ?" Who has sounded in such trumpet tones the prin- 
ciples of equality as he in "A man's a man for a' that?" 
And when, among the many millions who speak the 
English tongue, friends are gathered together, in what 
song do they pour out their gladness, but "Auld Lang 
Syne ?" 

He pictured himself often as a wreck upon life's sea, 
and envied sometimes those whose "prudent, cautious self 
control," kept them from the rocks; and yet, of all the 



merchant argosies that, saiHng under summer skies and 
over summer seas, came safely into the port of their des- 
tiny, how many, aye, were there any, bearing in their holds 
a freight so precious to humanity as the flotsam and the 
jetsaiT^cast ashore by the wreck of Robert Burns? 

But it is not for us to speak of his life as a wreck. 
Although he died while his manhood was in early prime, 
he had realized the inspiring wish of his youth, some use- 
ful plan or book to make or sing a song at least. He 
made the book, he sang the song, and the book is read and 
the song is heard the wide world over. 



89 



ROBERT BURNS 

By Willis Leonard Clanahao 

Read by Miss Maye McCamish Hedrick 

Scottish Day, August 15, 1904 

O Bard of Freedom, on whose brow 
A century's fame is shining now, 
Thy spirit be with us! for thou 

Has taught us all 
How men who must to monarchs bow 

For truth may fall. 

O teacher of the sons of men, 
By burning words and fervid pen, 
Come, and abide with us again. 

That we may know 
The soul that shone, a beacon, then, 

With deathless glow! 

Though mean and humble was thy lot. 

Thy parentage all but forgot, 

Fame sought thee where the crowd was not, 

And brought thee forth, 
A poet from a lonely cot, 

To light the earth. 

Thy songs, that smell of the sweet sod 
Where bluebells wave and thistles nod. 
Where barley grows and plowmen plod 

And daisies spring. 
Lift up the eager soul to God, 

Our only King. 

Of love and truth, what tender lays 
Thy spirit gave us! What a maze 
Of passion blinded thee, in days 

When thou wert young, 
And sounded forth sweet woman's praise 

With tuneful tongue! 

What songs of friendship true and tried, 

That shall eternally abide. 

Of love that for a friend had died, 

Didst thou attune! 
Thou wert the truth personified, 

O Bard of Doon! 

90 



Thou didst immortalize the land 

That gave thee being. Thou didst stand 

Alone, unaided; yet thy hand 

Wrote down the fame 
Of stern old Caledonia's grand 

And deathless name. 

By thee in human hearts wast bred 
A love of simple things — a dread 
Of Cruelty and Wrong, that tread 

On Truth and Right; 
Of Avarice, whose greed is fed 

By soulless Might. 

By thee the simple creed was taught 
To harm no man by deed or thought; 
To pain no living thing in aught, 

Be 't mouse or man, 
That in His wisdom God has wrought 

In His great plan. 

But more than all thy soul did scan 

The true nobility of man, 
And thou didst help to raise the ban 

From spirits cowed 
By poverty — more bitter than 

The grave and shroud. 

O best-beloved poet! pray 
Accept the tribute which we lay 
Before thee in our eager way. 

Our souls' own choice! 
Be with us in thy house to-day, 

While we rejoice. 



91 



'~p^HE reader of these pages will note that most of the quo- 
•*• tations from Burns are in the Scottish vernacular. "The 
Doric dialect of South Scotland, in which Burns wrote, only- 
increased the charm of his writing for me," said Judge Sale. 
In Mr. Lehman's address was this more extended reference 
to the same distinctive quality of Burns' writings: "Before 
Burns the Scottish tongue had not attained to the dignity of 
literary recognition. He chose it deliberately as the medium 
of his song, and it mastered him as much as he mastered it. 
Little of what he has written in pure English rises above the 
level of mediocrity, and it would not be possible to anglicize 
his Scottish verse without distinct impairment of its poetic 
quality." 

In Mr. Reedy's opinion, "the poet has told his life story 
in his song, and told it with a splendid simplicity in the 
language of the Scots farmer and peasant. When he essays 
literary English, speaking generally, the magic, the glamour 
vanishes." 

It is a curious fact that where the world now sees charm 
and strength in Burns, his earliest literary recognition found 
fault. A copy of the little Kilmarnock book was carried to 
Edinburgh by Professor Stewart when he went up from the 
banks of Ayr to commence his winter session at the uni- 
versity. It was given to Henry Mackenzie who was editing 
The Lounger, and whose judgment as a critic went far in 
that generation. Mackenzie was the author of "The Man of 
Feeling," one of the most popular books of the day, a book 
which Burns in his youth had read so often that it had been 
worn out. Mackenzie read this first collection of Burns' 
poems and wrote his opinion of it in The Lounger, The 
review introduced Burns to the literary world. At a meeting 
of the Burns Club of St. Louis this tribute of Mackenzie was 
produced and read. It is in striking contrast with the present 
estimate of Burns. Mackenzie wrote: 

"In the discovery of talents generally unknown, men are 
apt to indulge the same fond partiality as in all other dis- 
coveries which themselves have made. And hence we 
have had repeated instances of painters and poets who have 
been drawn from obscure situations, and held forth to public 
notice and applause by the extravagant enconiums of their 
introductors; whose merit though perhaps somewhat neg- 
lected, did not appear to have been much under-valued by the 
world, and could not support by its own intrinsic excellence 
that superior place which the enthusiasm of its patrons would 
have assigned it. 

92 



"I know not if I shall be accused of such enthusiasm and 
partiality, when I introduce to my readers a poet of our own 
country, with whose writings I have lately become acquainted; 
but if I am not greatly deceived, I think I may safely pro- 
nounce him a genius of no ordinary rank. The person to 
whom I allude is Robert Burns, an Ayrshire ploughman, 
whose poems were sometime ago published in a country 
town in the v>^est of Scotland, with no other ambition, if 
would seem than to circulate among the inhabitants of the 
country where he was born, to obtain a little fame from 
those who had heard of his talents. I hope I shall not be 
thought to assume too much, if I endeavor to place him in a 
higher point of view, to call for a verdict of his country upon 
the merits of his works, and to claim for him those honors 
which their excellence appears to deserve." 

Then followed this most extraordinary criticism upon 
Burns: 

"One bar indeed his birth and education have opposed 
to his fame — the language in which most of his poems are 
written. Even in Scotland, the provincial dialect which 
Ramsey and he have used is now read with a difficulty which 
greatly damps the pleasure of the reader; in England it 
cannot be read at all, without such a constant reference to 
a glossary as nearly to destroy that pleasure. Some of his 
productions, however, especially those of the grave style are 
almost English." 



93 



Q OME three hundred Burns Clubs in all parts of the world 
'^-^ have united to form the Burns Federation. The Burns 
Club of St. Louis is one of these. The objects, as set forth 
in the constitution of the Federation, are: 

"To strengthen and consolidate by universal affiliation the 
bond of fellowship existing among the members of Burns 
Clubs; to superintend the publication of works pertaining to 
Burns; to acquire a fund for the purchase and preservation 
of holograph manuscripts and other relics connected with the 
life of the poet." 

The Federation was inaugurated at Kilmarnock. There 
offices are maintained in connection with the Burns Library 
and Museum. Annual meetings of the Federation are held. 
A periodical known as the Burns Chronicle is issued. At the 
head of the Federation as Honorary Presidents are the Earl 
of Rosebery and Andrew Carnegie. Exchange of greetings is 
one of the pleasing forms in which the relationship between 
Burns Clubs find expression. 

From Poosie Nansie's Hostelry, The Jolly Beggars' 
Burns Club sent this "warmest greeting" to the Burns Club of 
St. Louis on the 1913 anniversary. 

Gie us a canny hour at e'en 
A' met in Robin's mem'ry O, 
Then warldly cares an' warldly spleen 
May a' gae tapsalterie O. 

Thomas Harvey of Mauchline founded The Jolly Beggars 
Club, as he explains in a letter to President Bixby, "to 
remove a reproach, there being none when I came here." He 
is a native of Ayr. From family tradition he has contributed 
this to the store of the St. Louis Club's information about 
Burns: 

"It may interest you to know that Burns, when at 
Kirkoswald school, spent every week end at Dalwhat farm, 
my great grandfather's, John Graham's. John Graham was a 
full brother of Douglas, tenant of O'Shanter, Burns' Tarn. 
My mother told me Uncle Douglas' wife was very supersti- 
tious and believed in witches, warlocks and the like. He 
had a lot of money to get in Ayr one market day and had it 
stored in his bonnet. It came on a fearful night and on the 
shore road he was nearly blown off his nag. His bonnet 
went with all his cash. He held on for dear life, and manu- 
factured the story about Alloway kirk in a blaze to explain 

94 



the loss of his money to his wife. She believed it. The 
story spread and Burns got it at Dalwhat. There was general 
laughter afterwards when the storm subsided and Douglas 
quietly mounted and searched the road, luckily finding his 
bonnet and money all safe in a wood where it had blown. 
Almost in his last years, when at Dumfries, Burns told the 
narrative he had heard at Kirkoswald to Captain Grose, the 
antiquarian, whom he there met, and at his request shaped 
and put it, without eflfort, into the immortal lines, Tam 
O'Shanter." 



THE BURNS CLUB OF 
ST. LOUIS 



W. K. Bixby 
Scott Blewett 
Hanford Crawford 
Archibald W. Douglas 
David R. Francis 
Robert Johnston 
Frederick W. Lehmann 
Saunders Norvell 
Ben Blewett 
David R. Calhoun 

George M. 



J. W. Dick 

Franklin Ferriss 
A. S. Greig 
David F. Houston 
George S. Johns 
Henry King 
W. M. Porteous 
M. N. Sale 
Walter B. Stevens 
M. L. Wilkinson 
Wright 



95 



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